


There are forces in the world and beyond the world

by Humanlighthouse



Category: Edgar Allan Poe's Murder Mystery Dinner Party (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Soulmate AU, The whole gang is here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-04-13 19:13:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14119044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Humanlighthouse/pseuds/Humanlighthouse
Summary: [Soulmate AU]Just because you know you're playing a game doesn't mean you don't get to pick your moves, that's what Lenore always did. Marrying Guy was her choice, whether or not the marks on their skin matched. They had to, anyway. After all, he was the love of her life! But fate is one of those things that go beyond life - before life, above it and, most importantly, after it - and fate does not agree with her choices.





	1. Sky Fell Over Me

**Author's Note:**

> This is the very first fanfic I've ever written, and English is not my first language, so be indulgent maybe? This fandom has consumed me entirely, and this is the brainchild of my obsession. Hope you guys like it! a million thanks to a_ufo_party for beta-ing this. Next chapter will be up soon :)
> 
> (the title is a quote from Dishonored because this game owns my soul)  
> (oh and the chapters are named after Shiny Toy Guns songs, which I highly recommend you check out too ;))

Most people had their marks deciphered by their early twenties. It’s common knowledge that you’re more likely than not to have met your soulmate before you even come of age, but Lenore’s twenty-fifth birthday was inching closer with each passing day and yet for the life of her she couldn’t figure out what the signs meant.

  
She liked it, though; her mark.

  
She often found herself running the tip of her index finger along the small inky bumps that ran vertically along her breast bone. It helped that the gesture was flirty. The confidence it gave her had half to do with the knowledge that her soulmate was out there somewhere, bearing that exact same mark along their sternum, and half to do with the certainty that the person standing in front of her was not them – that she didn’t need magic or destiny to turn eyes glassy with lust or to make them close completely as the men shook with laughter at her wit.  
  
And yet, some nights, when the man of the week had dropped her off on her front porch with a chaste kiss goodnight and the memory of him was little more than foggy heat and clinking glasses, she laid on her bed, limbs splayed wide, eyes staring unblinkingly at the ceiling, and she thought of that person that was hers and hers alone, and of the small symbols on her chest that tied her to them.  
  
At least hers was pretty. Just between her breasts sat a small white triangle, above which were two bronze circles, slightly askew. One half of it was hers, she knew it, but which? She couldn’t even tell that much. As for what it meant, only her soulmate could help her understand when they finally met.  
  
It could be way worse – this she knew for a fact, because Annabel, her best friend, had a black smudge besides a set of tiny turquoise waves on her right hip and it just looked weird.  
  
And she wasn’t the worst among their friend group.  
  
Oscar had such a complicated pattern on his thigh that he had apparently decided to get every single person he met into his bed if only for the chance to see them naked and compare marks. It was even less recognizable than Lenore’s.  
  
Almost as many people had seen Ernest’s, because he had a tendency to expose himself when inebriated, which happened more and more these days. Lenore understood. He too had yet to find to whom the golden orange sun setting over his tiny gray sailboat shape belonged, even though he had bought the boat itself two years ago when he happened upon it in an auction.  
  
In a way, they weren’t making this easy on themselves, she sometimes mused. Half of the world could find their soulmates in minutes if there was a database somewhere which would match the pairs, but there was a general ambivalence about soul marks – actively hiding yours was seen as weird, but exposing it was even worse.  
  
A few years ago, she had heard on the news about these two women who had found one another because they had both been filmed naked at some point, revealing a set of twin black circles on their pubis, and a pervert on reddit had inadvertently posted pictures of both thinking it was the same person. Turns out the camera lenses they bore on their skin had matched them better than any dating site.  
  
This was the good ending. Exposing yourself to anyone without the pretext of sex or intoxication seemed very desperate, even to her who was trying very hard – very hard – not to judge people.  
  
There was also the matter of placement. Statistically, there was more of a chance that your mark was on your trunk or on the upper part of your limbs than in any place you could casually show. Crop tops and daisy dukes coming back into fashion must have been a blessing for a large subset of the population. But unless she wore a very daring neckline, her mark was too low to be shown easily without flashing everybody in the vicinity.  
  
So like most people, she kept it hidden. Hell, she had never even seen her own brother’s. Who knew where Edgar’s was, or what it represented.  
  
Some were very peculiar about this, dressing super modestly or even, in the case of one weirdo she knew in highschool, wearing black leather gloves constantly to hide his palm or wherever else the mark had appeared on the skin. In Edgar’s case, it was the former, just his uptight sense of fashion and general oddness showing themselves in this form of enforced privacy.  
  
She would readily admit to being curious about it, but after more than twenty years, it was just a part of life. It was socially impossible to ask anyway.  
  
And then there was a rumor that some people just didn’t have one, and you just couldn’t risk asking someone who didn’t have one. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what that must feel like. What if her brother – no, she couldn’t. She just had to believe that, like her, he was a late matcher.  
  
Her mother, like many of her parents’ generation, thought the matching moment was predestined.  
  
Lenore, however, had never been one to let fate dictate her life, which is why she had decided that Guy de Vere was The One.  
  
They had been dating for a while, longer than she had with anyone before, and even though she had never seen his chest, she knew it was him.  
  
So here she was, dragging Annabel into a wedding dress boutique on Main Street despite her protestations.  
  
“Lenore, please, let go of my hand! I won’t be complicit in you throwing your hope away on-“  
  
She was cut off by Lenore barging into the shop.  
  
“Hiiii,” beamed Lenore at the shopkeeper. “We’re here for a fitting. I am getting married next week and I need your most fabulous dress,” she added with a flourish.  
  
Besides her, Annabel waited with her arms crossed. As Lenore was giving the specifics of what ‘fabulous’ meant to the shopkeeper, she steamed quietly. However, the minute the woman had disappeared into the back room, she turned to her friend and whispered angrily:  
  
“This is ridiculous, Lenore. You barely know Guy, and while I will admit that he is very nice to everyone and very handsome, but you can’t marry someone who is not your soulmate!”  
  
She pronounced that last word with the same kind of breathy reverence as everybody, but for some reason, today it got on Lenore’s nerves.  
  
“And why couldn’t I? Besides, maybe he is my soulmate and I just don’t know it yet because we haven’t matched marks, have you thought about that?” she answered with a stern wave of her finger. “Also, many people marry someone unmatched to them and they are perfectly happy, so I can be too!”  
  
Annabel looked at her with what she hoped was coming across as commiseration and not pity.  
  
“I’m not saying you wouldn’t be happy. I’m sure Guy adores you, and you two do make a cute couple, but soulmates are supposed to be... something else, you know? You’re supposed to know when you meet them. My dad always says he got this feeling in his stomach when he saw my mom, like he had met her before and he saw this light around her-“  
  
“Yeah, yeah, I know the story,” cut in Lenore. “Maybe it’s just- maybe just not the right time. Like, when we finally see each other’s marks on the wedding night, there will be the light and the explosions and everything. But I know it, AnnaBee, I have to do this. Trust me. Guy is the love of my life.”  
  
“Isn’t that just the cutest thing to say about your groom!” gushed the shopkeeper as she came back, her arms wide around a stack of white fabric covered in ribbons and lace. “Now all we must do is find you the perfect dress for your perfect day,” she giggled. “Sit, sit!”  
  
With a last look toward Annabel, Lenora sat on the large satin ottoman in the center of the room and started pointing out things she didn’t like on each dress, ignoring Annabel’s quiet sigh.  
  
_______________  
  
After almost an hour of nitpicking, Annabel was sitting too, and growing more and more tired. Lenore, on the other hand, was getting crankier by the second.  
  
“No!” she cried at the sight of the last dress, a plum colored number cut in crushed velvet with a high collar and bell sleeves. “What do I look like to you, a goth queen from the seventies?!”  
  
The shopkeeper’s answer had slowly degraded from bubbly to curt. She seemed to have even transcended that state now, and simply nodded silently, before disappearing once again into the back room.  
  
“Oh my god,” sighed Lenore heavily, shaking her dark curls.   
  
“You were a little harsh with her,” suggested Annabel.  
  
Lenore sighed again. “I know,” she frowned, “but it’s just so... frustrating. I’m starting to think you might be right, this is the universe telling me not to go through with the wedding. I’m doomed, I swear,” she concluded somberly, her right hand coming to rest naturally on her chest. Under her fingers, she could feel her heart beating, and between the pulsations, a soft buzzing.  
  
Annabel crossed the room and came to sit beside her on the oversized ottoman. She took Lenore’s hand softly. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it like this. You know I’m a big romantic,” she joked.  
  
Lenore chuckled. “Yeah ya are, you softie.”  
  
“Don’t pretend you’re not a softie inside too, I know you too well, miss,” countered Annabel with a raise of her eyebrows that suddenly made Lenore think she would be a great mom someday. “And I just wanted to say... I trust you.” She grabbed Lenore’s hand a little more forcefully and looked her straight in the eyes as she repeated: “I trust you. If you say Guy is the one, then he must be. Don’t go looking for other tips from fate, we have enough on our plates with the marks!” she laughed.  
  
Lenore couldn’t help but laugh too, even though her voice felt shaky and wet. She wanted to hug Annabel really tight and tell her how amazing a friend she was but also maybe to cry and feel sorry for herself for a little while.  
  
She had the opportunity to do neither of those things, as the shopkeeper came back once again with horrible timing – oh and a white dress this time, thank the stars. Her eyes were casted downward already, as if she felt defeated before Lenore had even had a chance to see the dress.  
  
“The only one I have left in your size is this one. It was returned by a customer, but she assured me it has never been worn,” she explained as she slowly unfolded it. “She had bought it in advance but the day of the wedding she chose to wear a tuxedo and leave the dress wearing to her wife who was the wrong size, so the dress found its way back here unworn. But I would understand if you’d rather-“

“Wait,” cut in Lenore as the woman held up the dress. Her heart was beating furiously against her rib cage. Underneath her bra strap, she could feel the buzzing had intensified, and a weird warmth was spreading from her mark. Narrowing her eyes, she looked closely at the dress before announcing: “This is it.”

Annabel and the shopkeeper wore matching expressions of surprise and disbelief but Lenore had never been more certain of anything in her life.

“This is the dress. I am taking it.”

“Don’t you want to try it on first?”

“Nope. It’s mine and I’ll be taking it right now please,” she stated firmly, rising from the seat and walking confidently in the direction of the register.

_______________

Once they were back on the street, Annabel finally dared to ask:

“What _happened_?”

Juggling her purse, the coat she had forgotten to put back on in her excitement, and the large white box with an even larger bow on top that she came out of the shop with, Lenore smiled.

“I felt it!” she announced.

Annabel’s eyes popped open as big as a doll’s. “You mean...?”

Lenore’s smile was bordering on the hysterical. “Yes. Well,“ she tempered, “not the light and explosions, but I felt _something_. There was this burning sensation on my mark. I heard a buzzing sound too and I just... I don’t know, it’s like I recognized it. Like this dress was calling me. It was super weird.”

“Wow,” said Annabel in a breathy voice.

They walked in silence for a few seconds, before Annabel stopped. Lenore turned to find her shaking with silent laughter.

“What’s up?”

It took a few more seconds for Annabel to compose herself enough to answer, even though her voice was still intersected with suppressed giggles.

“I always- always knew your soulmate w-would be a dress!” she finally said.

Lenore rolled her eyes. Had her hands been free, she would have put one on her hips and pursed her lips in mock reprimand. As it was, she cocked her head to one side, and ended up laughing along with her best friend. It was genuinely funny, she had to admit it.

On the ride back, Lenore glanced at the gigantic bow in the back seat, before saying quietly: “It’s not just the dress you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think I finally figured it out. What my symbols mean.”

“Oh?”

Lenore nodded, biting her lip as she concentrated on the road for a while.

“It’s the wedding, I think,” she said at last. “You’ve seen my mark, right? A white triangle and two bronze rings. Well, the triangle _has_ to be this dress. It’s the right color, the right shape, with the veil it makes a perfect triangle and what could be more soulmatey than a wedding dress?”

Annabel nodded. On the dashboard, a cream-colored business card rested, with the contact of the shopkeeper’s sister who worked as a wedding planner for something called “Soulmates Seremony” – Lenore had made a gagging motion behind the shopkeeper’s back when she had been handed the card, but it seemed to confirm her reasoning.

“If I’m right, and I absolutely am, the circles have to be rings. The color must be because Guy is getting us antique rings or something unique like that. So that means I was right about this whole thing, I really am destined to marry Guy!”

She looked so happy than Annabel kept to herself the real question she wanted to ask – _are you trying to convince me or yourself?_ Instead, she smiled and offered to help write the invitations.

_______________

The day before the wedding, Lenore was nursing the mother of all hangovers from her bachelorette party yesterday. Despite the headache and queasiness, she smiled stupidly at the ceiling just thinking of it.

Annabel had truly outdone herself. Only she knew that the Disney princess had a wilder side, it seemed, as the girls took turns ooh-ing and aaah-ing at the party plans. Louisa in particular. It must have been a serious change from her life on the farm.  
  
Even Mary, who started the evening being her usual gloomy self, only needed a couple of drinks to loosen up. By the fourth glass, her eyes had turned all dark and sparkly again, and she rambled on about her kinky escapades in the cemetery with her boyfriend. They had found one another while Percy was seeing another girl, who didn’t share his mark, but loved him too much to let go. The drama had kept their girl group entertained for ages. Eventually, the girl moved away, and Mary was vindicated. She paraded their relationship a little too hard sometimes, but Lenore guessed it was normal after what she endured. She sure was happy to never have gone through something like that. She couldn’t wait to marry the love of her life in two days.  
  
Speak of the devil, his evening must have been quite the downer compared to their raging fiesta. For some reason she had yet to be explained, her own brother was the one in charge of organizing Guy’s bachelor party. She could hear him snoring down the hall, so they had at least made it back safely – with Edgar, things could really go either way. He’d planned some of the most mind-staggeringly boring nights she had ever had to sit through, but on the other hand, he was also responsible for That Night in Senior Year, the one that ended up with stuff hastily hidden under the floorboards of their dorm room and half a bottle of bleach tossed in the dumpster outside from the third-floor window, so...  
  
She wanted to call Guy. Her head pounded hard at the thought of speaking, or worse, of hearing a voice. She figured texting was better for now.  
  
 _Hey you <3_, she sent.  
  
Barely a second later, her phone pinged, sending another shockwave of pain through her skull. Cursing through gritted teeth, she put in on silent before reading Guy’s message.  
  
 _hey love how was your night? do u need aspirin_  
  
She smiled again. He really was too good to be true.  
  
 _Breakfast should do the trick_ , she typed. _What about you?_  
  
She waited a few minutes for a reply before remembering her phone was on silent; she checked it once, twice, before the screen finally lit up in her hand with Guy’s reply.  
  
 _it was a little weird but fine._  
  
For Guy to put actual punctuation into a message, it must have been terrible. She winced. She would have to drop some salt into Eddie’s coffee again.  
  
 _What did he do this time?_  
  
Again, the reply took ages to come. Guy was a quick texter usually, so that means he was carefully choosing his words. Salted coffee it was, she decided, before closing her eyes. She almost fell back asleep when the light woke her up with a start.  
  
 _he didnt do anything the whole night was weird. he did give me a speech about hurting you that was kinda sweet but then he got drunk and talked about soulmates with his friend with glasses_  
  
HG was at the party?

 Lenore could feel her eyebrows come up to her hairline. Parties were not the kind of places she expected her brother to bring him to. While Ernest, his other best friend, was always eager for a drink, HG was notoriously sober – during That Night, he had been drilling holes in a closet, passing wires through walls in the hopes of intercepting waves of something EKG something other-acronym. He still got suspended with the rest of them, though.  
  
Her phone lit up again.  
  
 _and oscar grabbed my butt after calling me eddie_  
  
Guy’s brother Eduardo knew everybody both amicably and carnally and frequently said as much, but he vehemently denied ever having what Oscar insisted was “a passionate but short-lived affair” after graduation.  
  
 _I’m sorry,_ she sent. _We’ll have a better party at the wedding :D_  
  
 _ofc we will :) nothing but the best for my favorite girl_  
  
 _I’m gonna go get some food now, talk to you later?_ she replied.    
  
 _ok. i love u_  
  
 _Love you too._  
  
Lenore put her phone face down on the comforter and stared at the ceiling. She loved Guy. She did.  
  
Her head was killing her.  
  
She closed her eyes, but the headache still pounded behind her temples and her head swam.  
  
She sat up. Some food and water, maybe a couple of pills, and she would be all better. Her schedule for the day was light but she still had a lot to do. Looking this good all the time took some serious work and she had to look her absolute best tomorrow. So up she went and–  
  
Oh.  
  
Oh, this wasn’t good.  
  
Her vision suddenly blurred, while she felt herself bending dangerously forward. As she caught herself on her dresser, her stomach heaved as if it had been sucker punched and bile rose in her throat.  
  
She had never had a hangover this bad before. Raising a hand to her forehead, she found it burning with fever. Her whole body felt weak and hot and strangely dull, as if she was a play doll stuffed with warm cotton.  
  
In her ears, that weird buzzing sound was back. Her eyes stinged. She blinked away tears and wiped her nose that dripped like she had been crying. She looked down.  
  
On her white sleeve, a wide streak of dark blood appeared. Another drop fell from her nose as she stared, horrified. The floor rushed to meet her when she fell forward.  
  
In a second, all was black.  
  
_______________ **  
**


	2. Don't Cry Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yup, it's another chapter! Get ready for some ANGST guys ;)

Lenore woke a day later, and immediately wished she could fall back asleep.

There was none of that hesitation you sometimes get when you wake up in an unfamiliar place, no. She had left the warm comforting darkness of sleep for the harsh neon light of a bipping, hushed-voiced hospital room.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out this was where she was – not with the sudden nosebleed and the dizzy spell. As for the date, besides the IV drip connected to her arm was a giant monitor upon which were inscribed her pulse, a few swiggly lines, some letters she didn’t understand and, in big bold numbers, the date and time.

She sighed.

She felt too weak to move or speak, but the soft sound was apparently enough to gather the attention of everyone in the room. In seconds, her bed was surrounded by faces both familiar and new, all of which insisted on talking at the same damn time.

“Sweetie are you okay?”

“What the hell happened to you?”

“She’s awake!”

“Are you in any pain right now?”

“Can you squeeze my hand if you hear me?”

“Do you know what happened?”

“How are you feeling?”

This last one she could answer: overwhelmed. She felt overwhelmed. “What the hell happened to you” was another excellent choice. She wished she knew.

The nurses did their job quickly and left to find a doctor and some things or other, she didn’t really listen, because her parents took their place and started petting her hair gently. The weight of fear she had been ignoring up until this moment suddenly made itself known, and Lenore burst into tears. She was too exhausted for proper sobs. Her tears came out in big warm drops and ran down the sides of her face, wetting the pillow under her ears. She shook miserably.

“Lenore!” cried a voice from the door.

She wiped her tears just in time to see Guy pushing his way to her bedside.

“Oh Guy, hi,” she choked out with the shadow of a smile on her lips.

“Your brother called me, what happened? He said you fainted?”

Lenore nodded.

“Right after we talked. I think I ate a bad batch of ribs at the bachelorette party. I felt very weird, and next thing I knew I was on the floor,” she laughed weakly.

“And you’ve been here since yesterday? No wonder you didn’t pick up your phone.”

“Sorry.”

“No, no, that’s fine. Are you okay?”

She shrugged. “My head feels all... cottony. I think they gave me some pretty strong stuff; I would enjoy it but I just... wanna sleep...” The words came out each a little less distinct than the less. The last thing Lenore was conscious of was Guy pressing his lips to her forehead, before oblivion took over once more.

_______________

She dreamt of the sea.

Her body disappeared on rolling waves. The foam filled her lungs until they, too, disappeared. The darkness was not absolute either, but rather that kind of shaded, moving light she remembered from hiding under the covers as a child.

Behind it, she could hear the roll of thunder.

No wait.

They were voices.

Lenore awoke to reality like someone breaking water surface – squinting, gasping, and very disoriented.

She remembered being in the hospital, and the previous moment’s conversation; strangely, she even remembered coming here now. She could still hear Edgar’s shrieks, and feel the jumble of her limbs being arranged on a stretcher, or the blood pressure band squeezing her arm until she thought it would fall off. She remembered the fever and that strange silence in her head for once, as well as the splitting headache. She also remembered a terrible, terrible pain on her back, but that she could not explain.

In the few seconds it took her to reconnect with reality, she realized that reality was awfully weird today.

She was ...

It was like she was camping but in a bad way?

She was now inside a tent, apparently, only it was a plastic one with transparent sides and it was already fogging up and right now she was thanking her lucky stars that she was not claustrophobic, otherwise she would be totally freaking out and, yes, maybe she was, indeed, freaking out a bit, but she was allowed that much, right?

Because this? Not fun.

Not fun at all.

Inside the tent with her were her bed, of course, as well as most of the weird machines and IV drips and whatnots. Outside of it, pressing their faces behind the plastic windows, was her family.

She gave a small wave of her fingers, and pointed at the tent, scrunching her eyebrows. Damn, her face hurt. Her mother suddenly looked embarrassed and disappear. Lenore looked at her dad and mouthed “what the hell”, but he just shrugged.

Her mother came back, dragging along a nurse in full battle gear. She said a lot of things behind the wall and behind her own plastic get up, of which Lenore understood exactly nothing. It might have explained why her family suddenly disappeared, but then again, what did she know.

“Hello love,” said the woman cheerfully as she entered the tent.

If she hadn’t felt claustrophobic before, Lenore thought, she would now. The sides of the tent pressed on the woman’s body, and she bent forward to examine Lenore’s pupils with her pen light, taking up all the remain space in the tent. For a few seconds, Lenore held her breath, before gasping and taking in shallow breaths that barely moved her ribcage.

“Your pupillary responses are normal. How are you feeling?”

Lenore gave a noncommittal shrug.

“Can you tell me who the president is?”

She blinked a few times.

“Why-” she managed to croak out after a second, her throat dry.

“It’s a standard question.”

She answered it, as well as some others that included identifying a zebra and a tiger, counting to ten, and saying her parents’ and Edgar’s names. All of these were supposedly meant to test different parts of her brain for damage, or so the woman said.

“Now, do you have a sweetheart?”

“Guy, he’s my fiancé,” she said with a soft smile.

The nurse paused mid-motion, her gloved hand hovering exactly above Lenore’s sternum.

“Guy? As in Guy de Vere?”

Lenore nodded eagerly.

Even through the plastic visor, the nurse’s expression of painful compassion was evident. Lenore felt a shiver run down her back.

“... Why?” she asked, her voice stronger and steadier than it had been before.

“Oh sweetie, I don’t know if I should be the one to tell you,” finally answered the woman.

“It’s a little late for that.”

“He’s... well there’s been – how should I put this...”

“Simply.”

The woman looked around the small space, before looking at Lenore again.

“Do you know why you are in this, love?”

Lenore shook her head.

“Well, when you were brought in on Thursday, you were running a very high fever, so we tested your spinal fluid, and you... you have bacterial meningitis.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It’s when bacteria invade the membrane that protects your brain and spinal cord. It can be very dangerous, you were lucky to have been brought in so quickly but we have to isolate you like this from now on,” she explained, pointing to the sides of the tent, “because it’s also very contagious.”

Lenore looked up, as if she could still see Guy pressing his lips to her forehead. Did she- ?

“You mean I...”

“I’m afraid your fiancé has caught the Meningococcus as well. He’s been under treatment since yesterday.”

“What,” suddenly asked Lenore. “What day is it?”

The woman looked at her wrist by reflex, but most of her arms were covered with thick blue gloves the likes of which you saw in documentaries on Animal Planet.

“Today is Sunday, it’s a little after four in the afternoon, I think, I came in at 3.50.”

“Oh.”

Lenore felt herself fall back into the pillow, not even aware of how she had slowly been sitting up before.

She had missed her own wedding.

She wanted to cry, but she was too exhausted to muster up the energy. She had often joked about this with Annabel, every time she was late somewhere - it sounded less dreary than being late to your funeral, as the saying went -  but she had really done it. She had missed her wedding.

It was hard not to see it as a sign of the universe, this time.

But she loved Guy, really. She was sad. Even if the universe was against her, her sadness had to count for something, right?

She felt herself sink back into the dark again. This time, she welcomed it.

_______________

 The next time she opened her eyes, she knew something was very wrong. 

The shaded tent was gone and all around her was the blackness of the pit. She was up, she realized, standing upright alone in a world that knew neither floor nor limit, nothing but black, black everywhere. Like the whole world had disappeared.

Lenore screamed.

Her heart hammered in her chest, she took in quick breaths that did nothing to quell the panic rising in her. Taking a longer breath, she filled her chest and let it out in a scream so loud it sounded like silence to her ears.

Then another.

Then another.

She screamed until she couldn't anymore, until she fell forward on her knees on that floor she couldn't see.

There was no one to hear her. She was alone.

Lenore had always hated being alone. 

As she sat on that invisible floor, lonely and tired and afraid, she allowed herself to feel all the emotions that she had no time to process in the previous days and wept. She let it all out in big ugly sobs, tears and snot mixing on her cheeks. She was so scared.

“What have I done to deserve this?” she shouted to the darkness. “I’m a good person! I’m nice, I’m hot, I take care of my friends, I don’t hit idiots in the face, what more do you want from me!”

Her fists pummeled the absent ground.

“Where am I even! Is this hell? How come I deserve hell when there are so many assholes left on earth. Is this a test? Why are you doing this to me?” she cried out, half choking on her tears.

In vain she waited for an answer. Letting out one last, gut-wrenching sob, she laid on her side, hopeless and miserable, and closed her eyes to forget the darkness that surrounded her.

They snapped open not a second later.

Voices.

She’d hear voices.

Concentrating as hard as she could, she put her ear to the ground again and listened –no, prayed.

Here!

This was her mother’s voice!

Lenore tried to hold her breath to hear to sound more clearly, but she was too happy for that.

Here it was again!

Oh.

Her mom was crying too, it seemed.

“-and I don’t even know if you can hear this but we miss you very much and I swear I will never complain about your spending again if you just come back to us please baby come back wake up Lenore please-“

Lenore put both hands on the ground as if she could reach out to her mother and reassure her that she was still here, no matter where here was, she still _was_ , and she heard.

The voice was silent for a while. She listened intently but couldn’t hear anything. Still, she wasn’t as sad as she had been, because she knew the world was still out there, waiting for her, and she would come back. She didn’t know how just yet, but she would. There was no stopping her once she had decided something. The universe would just have to find its way around her somehow, because she sure as well was not the one changing her mind.

She stared resolutely at the darkness, as if daring it to contradict her.

The voice of her father broke her out of her staring contest with the void.

“Hey princess,” he said gently. His words came out softer than her mom’s, less agitated, but they were all the sadder for it. The both of them were talking to a lifeless body, right now, and it showed in their voices.

His voice faded too, after a while, but it was replaced by Annabel’s. She talked in her soft tones, warm and gentle even as she was sobbing. Lenore missed her terribly. She missed her hugs most of all. She could use one right about now.

Edgar’s voice came in after that. He wasn’t crying or, more accurately, he was trying not too, pausing for long silences at a time. He talked in his usual way, which was comforting to hear, because her brother had always had a tendency to talk _at_ people rather than _to_ them. She missed him too, the damned idiot.

 He talked the longest, about how their parents were dealing with having their daughter in a coma – which is what was happening apparently, thank you Edgar, some information at last! –, about what was happening to her body – she was still in the naughty people tent, from what she could gather, except he called it quarantine, which was decidedly less fun and way scarier –, and of course about Annabel, who was being comforted by none other than Eddie’s brother, who was “equally heartbroken” as she was.

She could hear the quotations marks. She could almost see Edgar’s face as he said that.

Lenore found herself laughing, and because she was laughing, she started to cry.

Edgar’s voice fell silent.

She wanted to call out to him, to ask him to come back and talk some more. Hell, he could even read to her his stupid poems and she would be happy.

She just didn’t want to be alone anymore.

“Please,” she begged to the silence. Her bottom lip quivered. She drew her knees to her chest and hugged them. _Please_.

“Hum hel-....... Hello,” finally said a voice.

She jumped.

“Hello?” she answered instinctively.

“This is stupid,” muttered the voice. “She can’t –”

“No, no, no, I can!” she urged, panic in her tone. _Don’t go!_

“Anyway. Maybe you can hear me. Who knows. Hi, Lenore. It’s me.”

 _HG?_ she thought.

“Well, of course, it’s me, obviously I would say that, I know I’m me. I mean, it’s... it’s HG. I’m here, in your- well, your room. Talking to you.”

He paused.

“This is so weird.”

Lenore chuckled silently. That little nerd.

“You are in a coma, presently, and your mother thinks you can hear us, so she has asked that we take turn keeping you company.”

She almost wept for joy at those words. Clasping her hands to her chest, she smiled, listening with all her heart.

 “It is now... half past eight, and we are on Monday evening. There are six of us doing it at the moment, but I expect more of your friends might be available on weekends. Um. Edgar was just here. He looked – well, like someone whose sister is in the hospital ought to look, I suppose. If I were him, I would be extremely sad too.”

He paused again.

“Everyone really misses you. It’s stupid, really, how you can see someone almost everyday and not think too much of it, only to realize when they’re gone how big a part they play in your life. I–I,” he stuttered, his voice coming out weird and breathy. “I... think I am, you know. Sad. I have no right to, but I miss you. I can’t imagine what Edgar and your parents are going through.”

He was silent for a while. Lenore was worried he had gone away, but he spoke again after a while.

“I don’t know what else to tell you. Maybe I can bring a book tomorrow. I don’t know what books you like, so I’ll ask Annabel if I run into her. I wonder if – One minute please! – sorry, that was the nurse, I think I have to go for now, but I hope you have a pleasant night and I’ll... I’ll be here tomorrow. Good night, Lenore.”

Alone once again, Lenore laid back on the ground. If she cried again after that, there was no one to see it anyway.


	3. Turn to Real Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay a new chapter! Enjoy this guys, I don't know how much longer I can procrastinate on my actual work... big thanks, as usual, to a_ufo_party for a super quick work beta-ing this! :)

The voices were back the next day, and the day after.

It helped Lenore keep a sense of time despite the unchanging darkness, especially since HG never failed to give her the time and date when he visited.

She was also up to date on all the juicy gossip thanks to Annabel and, unbeknownst to him, Edgar. She knew her brother carried a torch for her best friend, but the borderline stalkery way he got interested in Anna's budding relationship with Eddie was better than any tabloid.

She could still kill for a good magazine though.

She wished time would go by faster. At least the nights. During the day, there were people around - more or less talkative people depending on the hour of the day, but people still. Her parents usually came during the mornings and early afternoons, then Anna for tea time, then Edgar who came at nightfall like a vampire crawling out of his coffin, then HG, until he was kicked out by the night nurses.

A couple of other people had stopped by, said a few words and been on their way, but she was grateful. While fear still ran like an undercurrent along her back in the quiet moments, it was mostly the boredom that ate at her. She tried very hard not to recognize it as loneliness and focused on the voices when they came.

“Hello, Lenore. This is HG, it is now a quarter past seven, Friday evening.”

Like clockwork.

“Annabel still hasn’t replied to my message, but I did run into Mary in the hallway, who gave me her copy of that book she said you’ll like.”

He paused. Lenore tried to imagine him in his usual get-up, sitting by her bedside – no wait, she was still inside the tent, did that mean he donned the protective gear, or did he stay outside and talked loudly? It was hard to tell with just the sound.

“I vaguely remember her trying to pitch it to me once, so maybe it’s just a book _she_ likes and she’s trying to get everyone else to read it. I won’t blame her for that. What is it – oh, it’s a zombie story. Well, I don’t know if you’ll like it, but it should be entertaining. It can be worse than Louisa’s, right?”

Lenore chuckled. Then she thought that Louisa’s book had _actually_ bored her half to death, and she laughed out loud. In that brief moment, the darkness seemed a little lighter.

“So, here goes: ‘ _To Mrs. Saville, England_ ,’” read HG.

Lenore closed her eyes, letting his soothing voice carry her mind to the worlds of London and the North Pole.

She had been an avid reader, when she was younger. Granted, most of the books she’d read were silly Harlequin novels, but even in those there was a lot to be learned. She had become something of an expert on life aboard the ships crossing the Atlantic during the mid-XVIIIth century, as well as on the War of the Roses, if only because so many of them took place either inside a captain’s quarters or in one of those crumbling ruins of the Old World.

She had even read _some_ of the classics, the ones that were worth the title, at least.

This one was better than she thought. Maybe it was because she had been deprived of entertainment for so long, or because HG’s voice was so nice, but it was good. When the nurse came by to warn that they were closing to the public in fifteen minutes, she wanted to protest, because they were just reaching the end of chapter two and she wanted more.

“It was a strong effort of the spirit of good, but it was ineffectual,” read HG in a low tone. “Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction.”

Lenore felt a shiver run down her back that had nothing to do with the cold.

 “Well, this is it for tonight. This book is surprisingly good, I should tell Mary. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.”

She knew it was useless, but Lenore couldn’t help nodding.

“I shall be back tomorrow, as usual. Until then, sleep well, my dear,” he coughed lightly, “... Lenore. Good night.”

‘Dear Lenore’ found herself blushing and smiling. She laid on her side, closed her eyes, and dreamt of sunshine.

_______________

“Oh Lenore, I wish you could be here to see how much of a gentleman he’s been through all of this. I could almost think he is my soulmate!”

Lenore winced.

She was sitting cross-legged on the absent ground, half-heartedly listening to Annabel talk about her boyfriend. Deep down, she was glad that someone was taking care of her. Annabel had always been the sensitive one, she needed the comfort more than anyone.

But Eddie?

Truth be told, for the longest time she had believed that Guy was an only child. He had the charisma and the politeness of someone raised alone by older people. But maybe it was a family thing, because Eddie was just as confident, if not as nice. The few times she had actually met him, he had struck her as a player, someone who was well aware of his privileges but in the worst way possible.

And what kind of a name was Eduardo anyway. Who would guess Eduardo from Eddie?

To think of sweet, quiet Annabel being soulmates with him was disconcerting. It felt like wearing a jersey tracksuit jacket over a silk gown. Both were good, just... not together.  

“Maybe we could have a double wedding in the spring! Could you imagine?”

Lenore heard little of what was said after that. Eyes suddenly refocusing on her surroundings, she looked around, thinking of the voices and of the layout of her room. She turned toward where she thought Guy was, in another room just like this, maybe just like her.

Feeling increasingly silly, she called out, softly at first, then louder; she called his name, in the hopes that maybe, maybe, he was in there with her.

Maybe this was their great test from the universe, the one that would reveal whether or not they were indeed soulmates. It was a commonly accepted idea, that your soulmate usually came in at the most intense time in your life. She wasn’t usually one to give much credit to that kinda thing, but maybe they were right after all.

Who knew anything anymore, anyway.

She was trapped in a damn void, in which there was nothing but darkness, not even a real temperature – this was the really freaky thing to her, for some reason –  it was never hot or cold or anything remotely palpable, it was just like she floated into nothingness.

Like her body was gone.

Damn.

It was a really hot body.

She held onto her sassiness with every fiber of her being, for fear of going completely off her rocker in this empty otherworld. Biting her lip, she forced herself not to cry. She had always hated being sad, there was no reason to wallow in misery right now – _no reason at all. None. Nada. Niet. Nothing. Nope. Not gonna cry. Lenore don’t you dare cry._

“Hey sis,” suddenly sighed Edgar’s voice beside her.

She jumped and shrieked, and for the very first time, she was glad no one could hear.

Edgar sounded more depressed than usual. Not that he was a beacon of joy and hope in the best of time, but he had a surprisingly sweet side to him that not many people knew. She still remembered when they were 12 and he had gifted a pet rock to Anna for her birthday. Cute little dork.

Feeling sudden fondness for her brother, she sat upright and listen attentively to his whining and moaning and cursing, responding to it as if he had any chance to hear her. By the time he left, he was planning a particularly gloomy bit of poetry but sounded definitely more cheerful. Lenore liked to think part of it was her doing, but that was probably the same thing as therapy – just talking yourself through your problems helps.

Maybe she should give that a try.

Maybe later, because any minute now...

“Hello Lenore.”

Here he was.

“It is seven o’clock, Thursday evening. I hope you’ve had a pleasant day. Now, let me just find the page... here it is: ‘ _The monster saw my determination in my face and gnashed his teeth in the impotence of anger_ ’...”

Lenore felt herself relax slightly as HG started to read. Not for the first time, she thought to herself that he should record audiobooks or podcasts. He had such a nice voice. She could see every Swiss mountain depicted in the text, she could _feel_ the creature’s torment, she could even hear her own heart beating faster or slowing down to a lull depending on his tone, that’s how good he was.

She had to admit, this hour of reading was the thing she looked the most forward to in the day.  

“‘ _I walked about the isle like a restless spectre, separated from all it loved and miserable in the separation_ ’...”

The sentence trailed off, before ending in a silence. Lenore raised an eyebrow in curiosity, then tilted her head. She even called out to him but only the silence answered her.

For a split second, a shock of terror ran through her veins, flashing painfully on her back and ending in a tingle in her fingers.

What if this was over?

What if the voices were gone, and she would be all alone forever from now on, alone in the dark again-

“Sorry, I just- I thought of something. I... I’m really sorry, but I have to rush home for a bit, I’ll be back tomorrow I swear, but I really have to go for now. Um. Goodnight Lenore. See you tomorrow.”

Breathing hard, Lenore bent forward, hugging her knees, and basked in sweet relief.

_______________

The next day, Lenore felt like an ungrateful witch.

All day long, she listened to her loved ones talking to her, something so great and amazing, something so precious that only yesterday she had been terrified at the mere thought of losing this incredible connection – and all she could think of was HG.

Curiosity was eating at her like a crocodile.

For more than two weeks now, he had come to her room around seven, sometimes early and sometimes late, but only left when he was kicked out by the night shift and not a minute early. What could have made him rush out like this? She really hoped he would share, otherwise she was gonna break through whatever this universe was made of out of sheer frustration and demand an answer.

By mid-afternoon, her curiosity had reached a peak and seemingly transcended itself. She sat through Edgar’s new poem and listened to his lengthy explanations about this rhyme and that sound, feeling genuinely interested in them for once.

Who knew poetry was so complicated.

It helped that the poem was good. It was honestly one of his best works. He took the better part of all of his goth pretensions, his dramatic flair, and his sad love story, and somehow made a masterpiece out of it. When you knew him like she did, the bird metaphor was see-through, but it sounded perfect.

A very small part of her made a mental note to dangle a plastic raven from the attic window above his one night, though.

She was still laughing as he said his goodbyes and left.

Then she waited.

And waited.

The curiosity came back, ticking softly in her head like a clock, then exponentially louder until it felt like a timebomb waiting to explode. _What was taking him so long!_  

“Hello Lenore, sorry I’m late. It’s uh- half past seven, Friday evening. I have brought something with me tonight, not the book, I hope you’ll forgive me. I’ve just had the most interesting idea. Excuse me if I sound a little... manic, by the way, I um... I haven’t slept since yesterday and I’m afraid tea is not the best drink to keep one awake indefinitely, so I switched to coffee, but I’m still new to it and if you can see my hands you must know how well I am currently handling the caffeine. Nevermind. I am going to test some things in your room, now, if you’ll allow me.”

He fell silent for a moment, but Lenore could still somehow feel his presence. She tapped her nails on the absent ground, frustrated at the lack of noise, and rose to her feet. She paced around, growing more impatient by the second, especially since there was no way to know if she was even moving at all in this darkness.

“Come on, what are you doing!”

“Sorry, this is a bit long, I have to rearrange the- wait. Lenore, is that you?”

Lenore felt her heart simultaneously stop and start again in heavy beats. She choked on the lump in her throat.

“You... you can hear me?”

“Yes! Is that really you?”

“Yes,” she replied in a small voice. She raised her hands to her face, hiding the tears and the awful way her face contorted with a pain that had grown too large for her body to contain anymore. She even bit on her lower lip, hard, but she couldn’t stop the sobs from escaping. She sniffled once, and it made a horrible wet sound, but she didn’t care. 

 _Someone had heard_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick word: obviously none of them are famous authors (yet). The book mentionned here was (obviously) Frankenstein. I'll admit, this chapter was some unashamed literature porn. I always get a chill when I read those sentences in the book. Lastly, I don't condone Lenore's opinions on therapy!


	4. Photograph

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, sorry for the delay, real life has taken an interest in me again it seems and I haven't had a minute to myself this week. Luckily, the next chapter is already half-written, so it should take less time to appear. In the meantime, enjoy this (short) one!

 

« But ... how ? »

« Oh ! That’s the clever bit, actually, » answered HG, his voice perking up. There was never any hesitation or embarassment in his tone when he was explaining something. « When I was in college, I built a machine meant to pick up any unusual wave in a room. It was a variation on a EMF reader, coupled with a broadcasting antenna that transmitted information through the wires in- »

« The thing you drilled into the wall, right ? » asked Lenore. Funny, that she’d been thinking of That Night so recently.

There was a short pause.

« You do remember, » he said, a smile in his voice.

She laughed too, softly.

« I don’t think I’m ever getting that night out of my head. Or the stink of apple martini out of my blue dress, » she joked. « Shame. It was so fab. »

« It was, indeed, quite spectacular. »

Even alone and in the dark, Lenore raised a suggestive eyebrow.

« Why, thank you, professor. So, what’s your machine do ? »

« I’ve worked on it quite a bit over the years. In my free time of course. No one would actually pay me to research paranormal manifestations or time travel or anything of the sort, ahah... » He laughed weakly, bitterness palpable in his tone, before clearing his throat and resuming his explanation. « So. That part here- »

« Wait. You do know I can’t see anything, right ? »

« What do you mean ? »

« I mean I don’t see you. All I can see is... well, nothing. It’s dark. Black. All around me. Like there’s ... nothing. »

« Can you see yourself ? »

« Ish. »

« That’s odd. »

« Yeah, tell me about it, » she smiled through gritted teeth.

« What about other sensations ? Like touch, or smells, or sounds... »

« Again, there’s _nothing_ here. I’ve been sleeping on my own folded arm for weeks now and I would kill for a pillow. So nothing to smell or touch or whatever. »

« And sounds ? »

« Nothing but me talking to myself. And to you, now, thank god. I think if I’d spent one more day not being able to answer anyone I would have... I don’t know, done something. Gone mad, probably. That is, if I’m not already there, ya know... »

He chuckled quietly. « I don’t think you’re mad, Lenore. In fact, for someone in your situation, you sound surprisingly sane. »

« Yeah, but that’s because no one can hear me when I yell at Edgar to get his head out of his ass. »

« Or because it’s not much of a change from your usual demeanor, » he retorted.

« Fair. But here I can use gestures ! »

She could hear him try and fail to contain his laughter, and found herself laughing along with him.

He stopped laughing suddenly.

« What’s wrong ? » she asked, worried again.

« You said you could hear us talking to you ? »

« Yes, » she answered, anxiety lowering. It would be a long time before she stopped interpreting silence as danger. « Thank you for the book, by the way. I’m sure whatever’s left of my sanity is in large part due to your reading. »

« It was a pleasure – but if you can hear us, » he continued, half of him still thinking aloud, « can you hear anything else ? »

« No, » she answered without needing missing a beat. « I can only hear when people talk to me directly. I can’t even hear the nurses, most of the time, because they’re not adressing me, they’re talking amongst themselves.  All I get at best is a ‘Right, love ?’ or something to that effect. »

« That doesn’t make any sense. »

She gave a shrug and a lopsided smile, before reminding herself that he couldn’t see her. « Don’t ask me. »

« Um. »

He was silent for a moment after that. Lenore tried to think it over too, but she had just accepted it as one of the rules of this weird void world. She turned the problem over in her mind, before an idea struck her.

« Hey. How come _you_ can hear me ? »

« Oh, well, it’s this- right, you can’t see me. I am plugged into the machine. I have a headset on, which is how I hear you, but my goggles aren’t picking anything except... they look like heat waves, but darker. »

 _Wait_.

Lenore knew this.

« Like, dark purple, almost black, and wavering ? »

« Yes ? »

« This is what I see too. I mean, what I see of me. My skin is mostly the right color, but the edges are fuzzy, and the tips of my fingers look very purple-y. »

« Fascinating. So there _is_ a connection between these waves and your world. Try moving around. »

« Why ? »

« Just try it, please. »

Lenore got to her feet, and took a couple of steps in what she thought was the forward direction, but really could have been any other. She moved her arms in circles too for good measure. 

« It’s super weird to move in the dark, » she said with a quick laugh to alleviate her own tension. « I tried it on the first day but it’s like, what if there is a hole and I don’t see it ? I don’t even see the ground. It’s kinda freaky, to be honest. I feel like I’m in a dream. »

« You’re not that far from it. If this alternate dimension you’re in is anything like I suppose it is, a dream is perhaps the best description of it you could make. It’s a spiritual world, a place where your... I suppose we can call it your soul, took refuge during a traumatic event. »

« You mean the whole brush-with-death business ? » she joked.

« Yes. »

« Cheers for my soul then. Now, how do I come back from it ? »

Lenore kept her tone light-hearted on purpose, to prevent the worry slowly creeping up on her from giving way to actual fear. 

« I ... have no idea. »

« Oh. »

She couldn’t keep the disappointment out of her voice. If HG couldn’t get her out, no one could.

« For now ! Please don’t give up just yet. Now that I know that the machine works, I have a myriad of theories to test, and surely one of them will point us in the right direction. Just ... hold on a little longer, please. »

« Yeah, » she answered in a small voice.

« If you’re feeling up to it, maybe we can test a few of them before I have to leave for the night. »

« Sure. What should I do ? » she asked as she walked around, waving her arms again.

« What are you doing right now ? »

« Just... moving around, I guess ? I can’t see anything so I- »

« Wait, stop, » he suddenly ordered. « Or rather, don’t stop, keep doing what you’re doing exactly where you’re doing it. »

Feeling decidedly silly, Lenore stood in place, dancing a little, shaking her hands like a clown at a country fair.

« Lenore, I think you’re the one making the waves. » There was awe in his voice. « There is a pool of them manifesting in the corner of the room right now, that wasn’t there before. Try stepping to the left. »

She did.

« You are ! You definitely are. It’s more than a connection. I think you’re still _here_ , in a way, just, as I suspected, in another dimension of this room. This is incredible. »

Lenore thought on that, trying to superimpose the layout of the room over her empty world, but she had had very little time to see anything through the tent, so it was literally a shot in the dark for her.

« Where are you, relative to me, then ? » she asked. Maybe he could be her eyes and guide her through to the light.

« Um... try stepping forward – no, the other way around, that’s it. Now another step, and another, just a little to the right and- here I am. The waves are right in front of me. You’re right in front me now. »

« Are you warm ? »

« I – well, yes, I suppose I am, I haven’t taken off my coat. »

« I can feel it. I feel warmth in front of me. It’s so weird, there is no warm or cold here, but I can feel you. »

Fascinated, Lenore reached out to the puddle of warmth, before realizing she could be passing right through HG’s body.

The thought terrified her, not just because it was so gross to think about her hand going through a lung or a kidney, but also ...

« Am I a ghost ? » she asked suddenly.

She had a vision of herself in a white gown, floating through walls and scaring children, never able to touch anything again, to hold anyone again.

She didn’t want to be a ghost.

HG’s answer provided little comfort, though. « Not ... really ? I mean, I _am_ using ghost-related technology to communicate with you, but considering your body is still alive, you are more of a ... a wandering soul, shall we say, than a ghost proper. »

« What if I went to my body again ? Maybe I could, like, jump back in or something ? »

« We could try. »

They tried.

It didn’t work.

« Are you even sure I can go back in ? Maybe I’m supposed to be passing on, like a ghost-to-be or something, » she groaned from the place on the floor where she had sat back down, knees to her chest.

« No, no, please, be patient. Something _has_ to work. We could try – yes ? Oh please could I possibly stay for five more minutes ? Just five minutes and I’ll be out of your hair, I swear. I’m... yes, thank you, I’ll be quick – sorry, I have to leave soon. But before I do, I’m just going to jot down what we said today, so we can have a base line to build on. So. You’re in the dark- »

« Yes, » answered Lenore, her voice small and dejected.

« But you can see yourself. The purple waves in the room are apparently your energy manifesting on this plane of existence, and follow your movements. You can feel my body temperature, but not my body itself. »

He said that last sentence in his usual, clinical way of detailling a scientific curiosity, but for some reason it made Lenore blush. She was glad she hadn’t reached out and tried to touch him, it would have been weird.

« I can hear you, obviously. You can hear everyone that adresses you directly, but nothing else. »

He paused for a longer moment than she expected, so she felt compelled to answer what hadn’t been a question. « ... Yes. »

« Sorry. This is really bothering me. It makes no sense, physically. »

« Then maybe it’s not a physics thing. Maybe it’s magic. »

« Magic is just physics we haven’t understood yet, » he stated with a quiet kind of finality that was strangely attractive.

« So what if it doesn’t make sense ? »

« That means it’s a clue. Whenever there’s a mystery, there is always a little something that the mind rubs against, some lead to follow, some knot to untie. This is ours, I am certain of it. You said you can hear some words from the nurses too, right ? »

« Yes, words, but not much else. »

« What do you mean by ‘not much else’ ? »

« The words kind of ... appear, then fade out. Like when you were talking to her just now. Because you were not talking to _me_ , it’s – I don’t know, like the volume was lowered. If you’d kept talking to her instead of me, I probably would have stopped hearing you after a while. »

« I see. What if you concentrated on the words immediately after the ones you can hear ? »

She snickered. « You think I haven’t tried that ? Hearing stuff is my lifeline here. Of course I tried to keep ‘em coming. »

She knew he was blushing without even seeing him.

« Sorry, I wasn’t ... trying to imply anything. »

« Nah, it’s fine. Thank you for trying at all. It’s ... » She paused for a deep breath, before telling him : « You have no idea how much it means that you found a way for me to talk to you. I swear, I was going crazy, all alone like this. Hearing you guys was one thing, but being able to answer ? I ... » Her lips trembled as she fought to keep talking, but she couldn’t find the words to express her gratitude.

He was silent for a little while. Lenore was glad for it. 

« I’m sorry, the nurse just came back and asked me to leave, » he said at last. « I’ll be back tomorrow, of course. In the meantime, are there any messages you would like me to pass on ? »

Lenore thought on it a second, shook her head, realized he still couldn’t see her, and said « No. » Passing on messages felt too much like saying goodbye. She didn’t want to risk bursting the fragile bubble of luck that had brought HG to her.

For a split-second, a memory of Edgar’s week-long infatuation with photography resurfaced, and she thought of the afternoon he had spent trying to explain the processing of a picture, both of them bathed in the gloomy light of the red bulb he had screwed in his bedside lamp. By her standards, it took _ages_. Why waste a perfectly good day slaving over smelly pools of chemicals when her phone took better pictures and uploaded them instantly to her instagram ? Not to mention that the slightest light coming from outside could ruin all of their efforts in less time than it took to yell ‘oh shit’.

She felt like that.

Like a picture being slowly developped, going through weird, stinky processes to reveal something beautiful ; but also like the smallest intrusion could destroy her forever.

HG said his goodbyes and left. She stared at the place she had felt his warmth earlier, or rather, she stared at a point in the darkness and wished for it again.

None of the nurses who came to check on her that night talked to her.

She heard nothing.

Alone, she waited.

                                                                                                                   

 


	5. Rainy Monday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, apparently there was a problem with the mail updates for the last chapter, let's hope it's fixed and you all get the message that this one is out ;)

  
Lenore laid on the ground, starfish-style, deep in thoughts.

Edgar had just left after an hour-long reading of something he called « his greatest accomplishment ever », and her head ached. She was glad he was feeling better and all, but this essay, or whatever he had called it, was probably the only thing of his that should never be published.

_Come on, he used a diagram in the middle of it! And equations! He said this was poetry!_

She liked some of it though. It answered some big questions about the world, while raising some very interesting small ones about everyday life, but most of all, she love this idea of a big something breaking into the universe, and each of them bearing a little part of it.

Oh.

Maybe this was where soulmates came from!

She gasped into nothingness.

She’d always known her baby brother was a genius. Maybe this lengthy, convoluted monstrosity of an essay was salvageable after all. She smiled.

Laying like this, thinking about soulmates, brought back a memory from a few weeks ago. She had been in that same position, thinking about her mark, when – bam ! Guy had called. It had been a small thing in itself, but all those small things added up like pennies in a swear jar.

She missed him.

Her smile waned.

Of course she always missed him, but there were moments, like this one, where she really missed him a lot.

Drawing her hand up to her chest, she put it over her mark, willing it to show her a sign, any sign.

 _Wherever you are, I hope you’re okay too_.

« Hello, Lenore. »

HG’s voice broke her out of her trance.

« It is a quarter past seven, Sunday evening. »

« Hey, » she answered softly.

« Is something wrong ? You sound...tired. »

He, on the other hand, sounded worried.

« Just gloomy thoughts, I’ll be fine. All Edgar’s fault, as usual, » she joked, trying to lighten the mood.

« Oh. Are you talking about his essay ? He sent it to me to read yesterday. I must admit I don’t necessarily agree with all of it, but it is most interesting. »

Lenore sighed comically. « I am surrounded by nerds. »

« It’s kinda great, though, isn’t it ? » she heard him smile in return. « Speaking of...I have a few new things to test. »

« Alright, let’s do some magic, professor. »

« Please don’t call it that. »

Lenore stuck her tongue out at him, but kept silent. She was feeling better already.

« So. I first have to set up the hardware, that is, install this new machine and plug it into my old one. Then I’ll – here, there you go – now ... » he lapsed into silence, too absorbed by his invention to remember to describe them to her.

Lenore didn’t really need him to, anyway – after years of seeing him tinker with piles of gears and wires and gizmos, she could almost see him, bent forward, with his favorite screwdriver tucked into his front pocket, lovingly arranging pieces of metal into something incredible and new.

She _was_ feeling better.

So she waited patiently as he finished.

Even when the silence dragged on.

Even when the obscurity closed in, and in the space his absent voice left rose the ever-present worry that this impossible connection would disappear and leave her stranded in this world like a marooned sailor on a desert island with only the sea-whitened bones of a long-dead pirate for company and nothing to see for miles but sand, sand, and more sand, and-

« Lenore are you there ? »

Swallowing hard, she realized she had started to hyperventilate, and forced herself to take a couple of deep breaths before answering.

« Lenore, please, are you still there ? »

« Yes, yes, I'm here. Gosh, » she sighed, « it's like you're trying to summon a ghost. 'Spirit of Lenore, I call on you from the Great Beyooond', » she mocked.

« Sorry. »

« Tell me you have good news. »

« I... have news. That is, I am picking up something new. Just now, you emitted a different sort of frequencies. Did you do anything in particular ? »

Lenore felt herself blush and hesitated a bit before answering.

« Er... I was, maybe … er... panicking a little ? »

« Panicking ? Why ? » he asked with his usual curiosity. « Are you alright ? » he asked too, kindness lowering his voice.

« It's nothing, I'm just silly... » she mumbled.

« Emotions are meant to point out things of interest to us. They warn us of dangerous things, or highlight beneficial ones. They are a matter of survival, so they can never be silly, and frankly,  I don't think you are either. I'd understand if you didn't want to tell me, but please let me know if I can do anything. »

He delivered that speech in a perfect monotone, but there was a strength in his voice that didn't leave room for protest.

Lenore swallowed hard again, gathering her courage.

« I'm... I'm terrified, to be honest. Not all of time, obvi, I mean could you imagine, » she said with a short laugh that sounded hollow even to her own ears. « But sometimes, when no one's talking to me, it feels like... like I'm never gonna hear anything again, you know ? Like this is it, I'm trapped here forever and this ? I don't even know how it's possible that we can talk, so what if it went away again ? I would be alone and I- » she choked on the last word, not even knowing what she wanted to say next.

« Oh, » he said, as if it made sense. Maybe it did to him, Lenore thought. « I could – I mean if you wanted – maybe I could explain to you how the machine works ? Because the link won't go away, I can promise you that, it's very sound science, and knowing the details could reassure you, perhaps. »

« Yes. Please. »

« So... » he launched into an explanation that was complex but surprisingly easy to follow. Lenore found herself nodding along, feeling like she was back in school and watching a Bill Nye video.

« Wait, so you're telling me this is all in my head ? How ? I don't even want to be here ! »

« Well, it... is. It probably sounds bad when I put it that way, but a part of you _does_ want to be where you are, even if you're not aware of it. Like I said, this... this dark place you're in is a protection your brain built, to shield itself from a reality it couldn't face. »

« I astral-projected away from my problems ? »

The idea was ridiculous enough to make her smile.

« In a way, yes. Your desire to escape this place is not yet strong enough to break through, but whenever you feel a strong emotion, like you did earlier, the waves I see seem to solidify, somehow. I can almost see a human shape in them. I suppose with a bigger shock, you could manifest back on our plane. »

She laughed bitterly. « I don't really see how it could get any worse than this. »

Lenore regretted the words as soon as she spoke them. Betting against the universe seemed like a very bad idea right now.

_______________________

 

« Oh sweetheart... » was all her mother could get out before being choked by a sob.

« What's wrong ? » asked Lenore, knowing full well she wouldn't get an answer.

« I am so sorry, » said her father. He said a few other things, but empty, meaningless things, intersected with long silences. He didn't cry, but his voice was somber and slow.

« What is it ? What's happening ? » asked Lenore again.

« Oh honey, this is so awful. In a way, you're lucky to be... oh, well, sleeping, like you are. It's better that you don't... »

« What, what, WHAT ! » screamed Lenore into the void, forgetting that Annabel couldn't hear her.

« Lenore, I... I am sorry. Truly, » sighed Edgar.

« Edgar, I swear to god if you don't tell me _anything_... » she seethed, but he didn't say anymore.

All day long, all she'd heard were these awful voices, giving her condolences and sad, empty words, and she didn't even know what it was that they were sorry for. Even people who hadn't bothered to visit her once before had come, in between her usual visits, with more words, more sadness.

It drove her up the black void that passed for walls in this world. For the first time since all of this had happened, she wished for silence.

« Hi Lenore. I can't hear you just yet, I have to plug in the machine, but I wanted to let you know that I'm here. It's 7 o'clock, Monday evening. »

« What the hell, H ! What is happening? If someone doesn't tell me what's happening soon I- »

« I'm here, I'm here, please stop screaming, I couldn't hear a word, » he winced. « Hi, » he said again when she'd finally shut her mouth.

She barely heard it over her own labored breathing.

« I... There is something I have to tell you. I really, _really_ – I can't emphasize enough how _little_ I wish to be the person to tell you this, but... something happened. »

« What ? What happened ? »

The pause that followed was short, as if HG could feel how every new worried heartbeat was prolonged torture for her.

« Guy died this morning. I'm sorry. »

No one said anything for what felt like ages, both of their faces frozen in similar expressions of fake neutrality, though neither one of them could see the other.

« Lenore ? » finally called out HG in a gentle voice.

« Um ? » she answered distractedly.

« Are you – I know you're not alright, obviously, but are you, you know... alright ? »

« I ... I'm not sure.»

Lenore wasn't alright.

Lenore was as far as a human soul could be from alright.

She breathed evenly, she made no sound, she didn't move a toe, but stared fixedly ahead into a darkness that seemed to be getting inexorably closer.

Her head swam, and she felt that same dizzy feeling she had the day all of this had started, as if she was swaying around, bending forward and backward and sideward while not moving at all. She kept her eyes wide open, knowing that the second she closed them this would all be over.

This was it.

This was the end.

The darkness would close in on her and – poof ! It would be over. She would be gone.

The love of her life was already gone, and she was to follow. That's how the story went, right ? It was natural, and traditional, and all those things that supposedly feel good, except this didn't feel good at all.

She wasn't at peace.

She didn't long to rejoin her long-lost love, or to see heaven, or any of those things the choirs sing to you in Mass or read you in fairytales or Shakespeare. She was young ! She wanted to live, and laugh, and dream again, but what right had she to any of this, uh ?

What right had she when Guy was _dead_ , and it was _her fault_ , she had killed him - oh god, she had killed him - this was all her fault -

« Lenore, what are you doing ? » asked HG suddenly, forgetful of her grief in his worry. « The waves are multiplying and filling up the room – whatever it is you're doing, maybe... stop ? I don't – I don't think this bodes well for - Lenore ! » he called out, his tone getting increasingly panicked.

Lenore heard him.

He was her last tether to the world, and she was loathed to let him go, but the darkness called.

She could see it, just before her. If she stretched her arm, the tip of her fingers would be swallowed by it. Her eyes at half-mast, she raised her hand, just a little, as if she was testing the waters.

Behind her, HG's voice came, calling her name again and again. In between his calls, in between every beat of her heart, another voice called. It came from the inside of her own head. It wasn't a pleasant voice, but what it said was true. _You killed him. He's dead and it's your fault. You killed him. You killed him_.

She couldn't argue with that.

She realized she had closed her eyes when all that was left of this void world was sound.

Twin sounds.

Boom. Boom.

_Lenore !_

_You killed him._

Boom. Boom.

_Answer me !_

_He's dead and it's your fault._

Boom.

Boom.

At last, the silence won over her heart, and Lenore gave herself up to the dark.

______________________

She came to like a newborn: blinded and screaming.

After weeks of darkness, the neon lights felt like holy fire on her eyes. If this was death, it was a lot more painful and confusing than she had been expecting.

Uh. Maybe it was hell. She hadn't exactly been perfect during her life.

  
But wait.

  
A shadow passed over her face, placing itself between her and the light. It took some time for her to understand it was a face, and even more to recognize it as HG's, but once she did, she knew it wasn't hell. It couldn't be. How could that kind, overworked little nerd, with his scrunched-up face and his worried eyes ever deserve such a terrible fate?

  
Nah, it had to be heaven, or something of the sort.

  
She smiled at him beatifically.

  
That only seemed to make him worry more. After a while, she realized he was yelling at her.

  
"Lenore, _please_ ," he begged.

  
Her smile faded a little.

  
"Why are you yelling?" she asked.

  
HG went on a face journey through relief, surprise, confusion, disbelief, and what she supposed was his watered-down version of anger.

  
"Why am I- I... you- I thought you were dead!" he finally spat. "The whole room got flooded with that weird purple smoke and you stopped responding! And then you just..."

At a loss for words, he ran a hand through his messy hair.

  
Lenore stared, fascinated. She had never seen him so disheveled. His shirt collar was open, and his face was red underneath the strange bronze goggles he wore.

  
Lenore looked at him for a few more seconds before reality caught up with her and she realized she could see him. She gaped.

  
Looking around, she could see the whole room, walls and lights and all. She gaped some more.

  
Then she realized she was on the floor in the middle of it, lying sideways on her elbow, and HG was crouching awkwardly over her as if he had tried to help her up but failed and fallen forward which, all things considered, was most likely what had happened.

  
She raised a hand to touch the strand of hair that curled over his forehead, but it slipped through her fingers like dry sand, weightless, leaving no trace. Her fascination turned to horror.

  
"I can't touch you either," he whispered, confirming the worst of her fears.

« But, but, I came back ! »

« Well ... » he said, looking back over his shoulder.

She followed his gaze to the tent that sat, pristine and white, stacked against a wall. From where she lay she could just barely make out, through the plastic folds that closed its entrance, the shape of a bed, the shadow of feet. Her feet.

There was her body.

And here she was.

She averted her eyes, willing the thoughts in her head to drown back under the surface of her consciousness. Instead, she focused on HG, on his freckles and his wary smile.

« Hi, » she said.

« Hi, » he answered.

She was back. That was something. They could always figure out the rest. At this idea, a knot inside of her untwisted, let a weight she hadn't known she'd been carrying fly off and away from her. The despair was gone. In its place remained a tentative hope, and a remembered sadness.

She broke their silent, mutual contemplation, when she asked :

« Can you bring me to see him ? »

« Oh, » said HG, realization dawning on his face. « Yes. Of course. »

She smiled softly, thankful. He didn't smile in return, but rose, and led her from the room and through the sterile hallways, his heavy machine tucked under his arm.

As she floated behind him, a warmth she had forgotten spread through her ghostly bones, gratefulness and relief and light laving at the tired walls of her heart, so that when they reached the heavy door marked « Morgue », her head was empty of pain. She just wanted to see him one last time. She wanted to say goodbye.

« Could you... » she asked, pointing to the door. « I don't want to float through it, » she explained, her voice lowering in shame.

He nodded, shifted the weight of the machine on his hip, and held the door wide open so she wouldn't float through him either.

They found Guy in one of the lower drawers. His beautiful face had remained untouched. Only his hair, shaven short and dark with chemicals, gave any indication of the illness that had taken him away from her.

Lenore stroke his face gently, taking great care to let her fingers hover a hair-width over the tan skin of his cheek. HG had turned aside to give her some privacy, which she appreciated. She didn't want to hide her heart right now. Lips twisting in regret, eyes prickling with yet unshed tears, she allowed herself to ride the emotion out. Guy deserved that much. He deserved a proper goodbye. She thought back to their dates, to his sweet proposal, to his smile. He had been a wonderful boyfriend, and an even better fiancé. She would miss him forever, she knew, but it was time to let go.

His last gift had been this shock of pain that had broken through her darkness, and she thanked him for it by pressing phantom lips to his forehead, in a mirror image of the fatal gesture that had separated them.

 _Goodbye, love of my life,_ she thought. « Goodbye, Guy, » she said. Maybe he was stranded in a new somewhere and could still hear her – maybe they were still linked.

She turned to HG, and called his name.

« Um ? »

« Could you lower the sheet a little more, please ? »

Had they been in any other situation, she would have laughed at HG's face.

« Just under his chest, silly. I just wanna check something. »

Still making an admittedly hilarious face at her, HG proceeded to lower the sheet, first below Guy's neck, then his collarbone, then...

« Oh ! » blurted Lenore.

 


	6. I Promise You Walls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, sorry this took so long. Hope you enjoy the new chapter, only two more of them to come (*cough* because I'm running out of song titles *cough*)

Lenore stared at Guy’s chest.

She had done that a lot while they were dating, because he had stunning shoulders and you could see his pectoral muscles flexing through his shirt and it _did things_ to her, but she had always seen him clothed.

She would have known, otherwise.

Wouldn’t she ?

It was confusing even now, to be honest – because their marks were different, but _not entirely so_.

The mark was on his chest too, but it wasn’t dead center of it like hers, rather a little to the left, almost exactly over his heart. There was a white triangle, an exact copy of the one she bore on her sternum, but the two bronze circles were absent. Instead, another triangle, dark grey, sat underneath his white one, inverted, almost like a shadow of it.

The reality was undeniable, but she fought it, wrestling the thoughts away from her head, because it was just too dismal for her to bear.

She looked at his face, peaceful and pretty, eyes closed like the angels that wept over tombstones. If she thought destiny had been cruel with her, it was nothing compared to what it had had in store for poor Guy.

At last, she allowed the thought to invade her headspace, and faced the sad reality of it.

She is his soulmate but he was not hers.

It happened, sometimes, but it was the kind of thing no one liked to dwell on, because the fear of such a sucky fate would frighten the boldest of souls. Just the mention of it was enough to raise eyebrows and twist mouths in an exaggerated show of compassion. She could feel that compassion inside of her, inflating like a balloon in her chest and pressing on her throat.

« Oh, Guy, » she breathed, blinking rapidly.

At the sound of her voice, HG turned back, his face a mask of perfect politeness that badly hid the frightened curiosity that was devouring him. He looked from the body to Lenore’s face in rapid order, tilting his head aside in confusion when he noticed her reaction.

He swallowed once, audibly, before asking : « I take it he wasn’t your soulmate. »

Lenore shook her head, lips pressing together to keep the sadness inside.

« But I was his, » she admitted at last in a small voice.

« Oh. »

Both of them glanced up from the body and at each other, eyes locking together. An eternity seemed to pass. Lenore could see herself reflected in the glass of his goggles, but behind them, she could feel his gaze, dark and penetrating.

She found herself breathless, and blamed it on the grief, which was true enough.

Lowering her eyes with a blush that was decidedly out of character for her, Lenore coughed, and looked back at Guy.

« I want to ... » she started, thinking out loud, « I wanna do something for him, but I don’t know what. »

As HG stayed silent, she continued.

« Maybe we could... I don’t know, I’m just spitballing here, but we could try to ... talk to him ? You said this was a ghost machine, right ? »

HG thought on the question for a while before answering.

« I’m not certain of how this could work, » he finally admitted. « Like I said, this works kind of like a long-distance radio. It picked up your frequency, and by tuning into it through the machine, I can communicate with you. I don’t know how I could connect to two different frequencies through it, let alone open a channel between them. Not to mention that he is probably on a different – uh .... wavelength, shall we say, than you are, since you are not a ghost and he, assuming we could actually reach him, would most definitely be one- »

« I get it, forget I said anything. »

« No, no, I’ll... I’ll work on it, I just need some time. Obviously it’s important to you, so I’ll do my best, but I can’t promise you anything. »

His serious face made something inside of Lenore melt. Struggling to find how to express her gratitude, she floated up to him and smiled softly. « Thank you, » she said.

His blush spread out underneath the goggles, and down to his collar.

« I have entire faith in your abilities, Professor. » Her smile turned wicked. « If anyone can do it, it’s you. Or the ghostbusters. »

Still blushing, he managed to look offended at the comparison. _This was too easy_ , she thought with a laugh.

« But should you fail in your endeavors ... I’m just happy we tried something, honestly, » she said, more soberly. « You know, » she added, backing up a little and looking aside, « I wasn’t such a great girlfriend when he was alive. I was selfish. I loved the gifts and the attention, and I adored him but I _know_ I could have been nicer. I thought we would have a whole life together, that I would make it up to him in the end. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, right ? Because we would have been _soulmates_. »

She said that last word with a particular tone of voice, halfway between anger and ridicule. This old dream of hers made her feel like a fool now. She wished she had known this back then. She would have done things differently. _But the old adage really is true_ , she thought bitterly, _you never know what you have... blablabla._

« I’m sure he knew this too, » said HG reassuringly. « I mean, the circumstances were ... special and- » he trailed off, not knowing how to finish that sentence.

« Don’t bother, » she answered, not unkindly. « It’s just hard to adapt to change, you know ? Sorry for dumping all of this on you. Well... to be fair, you’re the one who built the machine, so you kinda brought this upon yourself, » she joked to lighten the mood.

« I sure did, » he smiled back.

They stared at one another again, their smiles growing softer the longer they faced each other. After a while, he shook his head as if remembering himself.

« I still have no idea how you can hear us, though. It is a complete mystery to me, because it had obviously nothing to do with your bodily senses, since you can still hear me perfectly down here. »

Lenore gagged a little at the term ‘bodily senses’, but had to agree.

« Furthermore, » he continued, because he was the kind of person to use that word in casual conversation, and it made Lenore’s smile shine again, « while I am reluctant to attribute any of this to magic or supernatural powers- »

« You literally built this to chat with ghosts. »

« Lenore... »

« Not judging, just stating a fact. »

« As I was saying, despite my reluctance, I have to admit that your frequency fell a little _too_ easily into my hands, » his said, his tone rising at the end of the sentence like a child with a secret.

« What do you mean, too easily ? »

« The night we spoke for the first time, if you remember, I was still plugging the machine in when I suddenly heard your voice. »

Lenore remembered vividly. It wasn’t the sort of moment she was likely to ever forget.

« The thing is... I didn’t tune into anything in particular. In fact, because I was busy plugging in everything, I hadn’t yet turned any of the knobs. The frequency it tuned into was the one the machine had been left on the last time I used it, that is... »

« That Night. »

« Exactly. »

« Uh. That’s weird. »

« Which is precisely my point. It’s too weird, too _simple_ to be a coincidence. Out of all the possible interferences – and because this is a hospital, there are hundreds of them – it picked up on _yours_ , the one I was desperate to connect to. »

« Desperate, uh ? »

« I meant that literally, I had very little hope of this working. »

« Uh uh, sure. »

« Besides the point. There is something there, call it magic if you will, but if it exists, it’s testable, it’s quantifiable, _it can be used_. » His voice rose with the passion of his enthusiasm. « If it is somehow linked to you, if you – I don’t know – if you left something of yours, an energy, a wavelength, something – inside of the machine during that night, maybe we could use this to bring you back into your own body. »

« This would be- »

She was cut off by the sound of footsteps approaching.

Not two seconds later, HG was running in the hallway, his heavy machine held preciously in his arms and a security guard on his tail. Lenore slipped through the closing door behind him and fled along with him, feeling nervous and excited and hopeful again.

_____________________

A few days later, Lenore was sleeping in her new position, curled up on herself like a cat in a corner of the room, away from clueless feet and falling debris. She had been woken up once by a janitor literally mopping the floor through her and it was likely to remain as one of the weirdest experiences of her life. Manifesting back on solid, visible earth had its disadvantages.

One of them was seeing people again.

It was kind of a double-edged sword, really. On the one hand, she could see people again! But on the other, it also meant that she saw every expression that crossed their faces when they looked at her body – not at _her_ , but at the tent – when they thought she couldn’t see or hear them, and most of the time, well, she wished she couldn’t.

Her visitors had good days and bad days.

Her parents had mostly bad days. In the mornings, she sat in her corner, away from them, because seeing the red in her mother’s eyes or the stiffness of her father’s expression was always guaranteed to make her cry too.

Annabel was doing her best to remain as peppy and cheerful as she’d always been, despite being left without a best friend to actually talk to, and with a boyfriend who was planning his brother’s funeral. Lenore still looked forward to her visits, though - not just for the fresh gossip, but sometimes just to see her pretty, Disney-princess face again. Not a day had gone by without her visiting, and yet Lenore missed her terribly.

Edgar always looked halfway between awkward and constipated, so his face had remained the same for the most part. She tried to ignore the size of the bags under his eyes. They reached halfway to his cheeks now, and his big, stupid brown eyes looked even more haunted than before, but not enough so that Lenore couldn’t pretend her brother was fine without her. Most days, she sat besides his chair and listened, her eyes just opened enough to let in a little light – enough for her to know that she was back, but not enough to see anything unpleasant.

Lenore was very good at pretending.

She should totally become an actress.

She was mulling the idea over, stretching ghost limbs and yawning wide, an ear out for voices in the hallway, when her parents entered the room.

_That’s odd,_ she thought. Her parents rarely came together, prefering to spread their visiting hours between the two of them so she wasn’t alone for too long in the mornings.  

« Hello sweetie, » her mother said, approaching the tent. Lenore went to stand on the other side of it, studying their faces with curiosity. _She looks..._

Optimistic.

She struggled to find the correct word, so odd was the notion of optimism when her mother and father were talking to her actual comatose body.

« Tell her ! »

« No, no, » argued her father, « you tell her. You’re the one who found her, after all. »

_Found who ?_

« So, » said her mother, fingers splayed wide with enthusiasm, « we found a way to bring you back, sweetheart. Her name is Krishanti, she is a medium... »

« Wonderful girl, very considerate, » added her father.

« Yes, very, and she has agreed to come perform a ceremony to call your spirit back into your body tomorrow. Isn’t that amazing ! »

Lenore tilted her head in bewilderment. She didn’t remember ever hearing her parents mention any sort of belief in the supernatural, but then again, desperate times and all that jazz.

She spent the rest of the day wondering if there was any mojo in that medium, and if it was worth building any sort of hope on it.

She then realized that it was too late. She was already starting to hope.

Her mother would have made an amazing salesperson, to be honest, because that Krishanti ? She made her sound like the real deal.

So much so that, when HG finally came by that night – at twenty minutes past, if the clock on the wall was on time – the first thing past her lips was « They found a way to bring me back ! »

« I’m – I’m sorry, what ? »

« My parents ! They called a medium called Krishanti who is like, super powerful, like she talks to ghosts on the reg, and she can totally call me back into my body apparently, so tomorrow they’re gonna perform this ceremony and you have to come because I’m sure it’ll be super- »

« I ... sorry, but this is insane ? » he said cautiously, aware of his rudeness but unable to stop himself.

« Why ? » asked Lenore in a neutral tone, feeling her own enthusiasm deflate. She wasn’t sure yet if she should be pissed at him, but his face was a strong indication that she would be soon.

« Your parents are getting ripped off. There is no way- »

« No way she can talk to ghosts ? You do it just fine, it seems, » she replied.

« This is... obviously different, I mean, this is sound science, Lenore, not a cheap party trick. It’s logic, not magic. »

Lenore audibly scoffed at this.

« And why couldn’t it be both, uh ? Where’s all that testable, quantifiable stuff now, uh ? »

« Again, this is different. The scientific method is based on hypothesis testing, not just ... intuitions and coincidences. »

« You mean like the knob being on my channel coincidence, or like Guy bearing half of my mark intuition ? »

« I ... »

On a normal day, leaving HG speechless would have been a win loudly and pettily celebrated. Now, the victory felt hollow. She didn’t want to be fighting with him. _Why did he have to rain on her parade_  !

« Soulmates are different, » he mumbled, cheeks red.

« They’re a proof that there is something beyond all of this, » she retorted, gesturing widely. « Why can’t you accept the idea, even just in theory, that maybe she really can bring me back- » She paused, words jumbling in her head. « Don’t you want me to come back ? » she finally challenged.

« Of course I do. I’ll bring you back, » he answered without an ounce of hesitation. « With or without magic, you’ll come home. I promised you would. »

It was Lenore’s turn to be speechless.

She wished she could see HG’s eyes right now, because she had so many questions, and his neutral face gave her exactly zero answers.

But then again, what questions would she ask ? She couldn’t even let her brain formulate them. The wonder just sat in her throat, her lips opening and closing as if they tried to lure it out.

All the fight had left her. Shoulders down, she turned her eyes aside and swallowed.

« I can’t stop them from doing it anyway, no matter what you think of it. But I ... I would really like it if you came. »

HG coughed awkwardly.

« Yes, it might prove... interesting anyhow. I’ll try to be there. »

She nodded.

« Thank you. »

« No problem. »

The silence dragged on. Lenore looked up at the clock – it was barely a quarter to eight, long before HG had to leave. She had to find something to say.

« So, » she said, racking her brain to find the safest point in their previous conversation, « what do you think soulmates are ? »

Even through the goggles she could see him blink furiously.

« I uh ... I think they are a lifeline, of sorts ? »

She tilted her head in surprise.

« I mean, we don’t know exactly what caused them to appear, but we have very ancient records of humans bearing them, while no other animal does that we know of, not even primates, so it’s obviously something to do with our particular species. » He paused for air. « The question, I think, is less of a how and more of a why : why do we have those markings ? And my guess is ... because we’re a very lonely species. We have developed a consciousness beyond most other species, and with it both social needs and social boundaries that are in direct opposition with one another, leading us to this... longing. The marks do betray the existence of powers beyond our usual understanding of life, be them fate or gods or angels or _something_ , but I think they’re benevolent powers. Why else would they give us such a unique and incredible experience ? »

Lenore nodded in agreement.

« The marks could be an evolutionary trait, of course, but I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive. Maybe our intrinsic loneliness was what made them develop. Maybe our yearning for one another somehow grew them on our skin. But how they are paired off, again, is beyond our present understanding. The only certainty is that they are never wrong, and that is their true power, in my opinion. As long as you have a mark, you know that somewhere, there is someone like you, and that you won’t be alone forever. »

That last sentence resonated in the room. Lenore found herself nodding again, remembering like an echo a similar sentiment expressed in her own mind a few days earlier.

_Somewhere, someone_.

_Some day_.

« You’re right, » she agreed. « My mom says they always come at the worst of times, but maybe that’s why, so we have something to rely on when things screw up. »

« I guess so. I don’t have much experience with terrible things happening, present situation notwithstanding. But even when I was a boy, » he continued, « I had broken my leg and was bedridden for weeks, my mark had just started to appear, and I kept thinking about this person that was bonded to me, this... mate. I thought it would be an instant friend, someone who would automatically like me, and that they would be by my side if they could. When I felt really lonely, I thought of them. I imagined them by my bedside, and I told them stories, » he even admitted, the blush returning to his cheeks.

« Aww, » gushed Lenore, a smile spreading on her face at the idea of a tiny HG and his imaginary friend. She’d had one of those too.

« I don’t know why I am telling you this, it’s- »

« No, no, I do it too. I mean, I don’t talk to my soulmate anymore, but yeah, I think of them when my life really sucks. I’ve thought of them a lot recently, » she laughed. HG winced at the joke. « Sorry, that was in poor taste. I did it less when I was with Guy, but even then, sometimes I would... »

She ran a finger along her breastbone in the flirty manner she used by reflex, catching HG’s glance as it tried to follow her finger down.

She heard him swallow, but didn’t think twice of it, lost as she was in memories of days gone by.

« When I was a teenager, I literally thought of nothing else. My life was okay, but you know how it is, with the hormones and everything, every boy I met was the one. I’d like to think I’ve grown out of it, but... » she shrugged. « Just look at poor Guy. »

« Well you... were half ... right, » he said tentatively.

She chuckled silently.

« Yeah, I guess. It just – it kinda sucks, not being able to know for sure, you know what I mean ? Why don’t we have like a website, you could submit on anon if you wanted to, but there’d be a trace of you and you could find your soulmate in just a click instead of wading through all of that- » she left the expletive unsaid, but the frustration behind it was palpable.

« I agree wholeheartedly. A database would solve a lot of problems with soulmates, but it’s unlikely we’ll ever get one. There have been some on the net, but they’re not very... commendable. »

_More like porn sites for lovesick idiots_.

« I don’t think I could ever show mine like this online even if it existed. »

« Me neither, » agreed HG with a shudder.

The mere idea of it went against so many things they had been taught since childhood that it made Lenore’s mouth twist with disgust.

« Not to mention, » added HG, « that most people feel as if soulmates should be... earned, for lack of a better word. »

« I get it, yeah. It’s that whole ‘worst time of your life’ thing again. You go through trials, and there’s your reward. »

« Perhaps. If the scale is measured in pain and suffering, then a lot of them are long overdue. »

She laughed.

« Any minute now ! » she called to the ceiling.

It made HG smile, though it didn’t remain on his lips very long.

« With what you’ve endured, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before they appear. Maybe it’s just a matter of – actual – matter, even. Once you’re back on the proper plane, everything will fall into place and you’ll... » The rest of the sentence drifted into silence.

« Yeah, » answered Lenore, equally quiet. « I hope. »

HG rose from his seat, and started gathering his things. « Well, I-, » he started, pausing to shrug on his coat, « I’ll be there tomorrow. And um... I really hope that what your parents are trying works. »

« Me too, » she said softly. « It’s not that I don’t believe in you, it’s just... whichever happens first, you know ? » He nodded in understanding. « At this point, I just wanna come home. »

« I know. I’m sorry I made you upset. I will gladly believe in whatever this woman is if she brings you back to us. »

Lenore smiled as he said his goodbyes. She stopped smiling when the door closed on him. She was tempted to go through it and after him, to follow him through the hallways and out of the hospital. To see real life again. To go home.

She missed home.

She missed everything.

Shaking her head, she sat back in her corner, curled up in a ball, and willed herself to fall asleep. Tomorrow would be a long day.

 


	7. Chemistry Of A Car Crash

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Sorry in advance, but enjoy? :) The next chapter should be the last! Oh, and the line Lenore is quoting is from The Garden of Proserpine, by Charles Algernon Swinburne, my second-favorite poem, so definitely check it out!

With the conversation of the previous day weighing heavily on her mind, Lenore slept fitfully, and only woke up when the voices in her room became too obnoxious for her to sleep through.

Her parents, Edgar, Annabel, Mary, and a few other people were there, preparing the ceremony.

Annabel stood on one side with Lenore’s parents, gently comforting them, one hand pressing her mother’s forearm reassuringly while she conversed with her father.

Edgar stood on the other side, arms crossed, waving a bunch a lit sage from one hand with a stuck-up expression on his face that made Lenore smile.

Meanwhile, Mary was looking around the room like a curious cat, following Krishanti as she drew patterns in bright red chalk on the ground and hung bits of papers and thread on the various objects in the room. Lenore followed the both of them around for a while too, trying hard to take interest in the ceremony that was supposed to bring her back to her own body, but Krishanti’s refusal to explain any of it to ‘unbelievers’ was a little off-putting, so she went back to her corner, sat down, and waited.

After waiting two whole minutes, with the clock ticking over her head and that medium Kri-chanting around the room and Mary’s skeptic mumbles and her Edgar’s eye rolls, Lenore got back up on her feet and went in the hallway. Observing the comings and goings of nurses and doctors would be decidedly less boring than overseeing the preparations for the ceremony.

The first night she’d been back, she’d spent almost the entire night watching them. People. Alive, breathing, healthy people. Walking. Talking. Existing with one another, touching one another. It was wonderful and she hadn’t realized she’d missed it so much. The loneliness she knew was an indescribable sort of pain in itself, far deeper than this absence of people, but even just seeing them had made it hurt less, somehow.

Now, like all miracles, she was starting to take it for granted. She floated by a wall, out of the way, and watch them the way she remembered watching the crowd at a mall, dispassionately.

From the elevator at the end of the corridor came quite a lot of her friends, George, Emily, Louisa, Ernest, Fyodor, even Charlotte and Anne, trickling into the room one after the other. From what she could make of their voices outside, the ceremony would soon be underway.

The voices were another thing she was starting to take for granted. They were all around her now, noises and echoes and wails and laughter, filling the place where before had been only silence. And yet, there were ... normal. Just regular noises, the kind she had always known. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life marvelling at them.

But still, a part of her remembered the silence.

More than the silence, a part of her would always remember the moment the silence broke.

When she’d heard him.

Standing straight by the door, Lenore realized she was waiting for HG to arrive.

She wasn’t the only one, apparently, because Edgar came out of the room twice, checking his watch, then the hallway, before shaking his head and going back in. Her eyes followed her brother into the room, taking in the motley crew. Since Annabel was already inside, the missing piece of their little Friends-And-Family puzzle was obvious.

Checking the time was useless, she thought. For someone so obsessed with it, HG was constantly late. Maybe that was the real purpose behind that time machine he was always talking about – finally make him on time. She chuckled quietly at the idea.

The ‘ping’ of the elevator made her head turn, and her eyes fell on him.

Ever since she had been able to see him again, HG had been wearing those weird bronze goggles that ate up half of his face, so Lenore had forgotten how beautiful he was. He walked down the hallway hurriedly, his face open and his pretty eyes wide, until he reached the door and heard the noise inside, and stopped.

« Lenore, are you here ? » he asked.

She was, right beside him.

« I guess you are, I know I would. Sorry I’m late, I tried some last minute changes to the machine. Let’s see if they work, shall we ? » he continued, raising the heavy machine a little in accentuation.

He looked around for a place to put it down, almost walking through her. Lenore backed up, having unknowingly floated much closed to him than she intended. She felt her heart beat faster, and mistook it for surprise.

HG found a closet by the room’s entrance, and set the machine up on a shelf. Just as he was plugging it in, Edgar came back, gratefully embracing his friend and dragging him further inside to see the preparations.

« What- Edgar are you kidding me ! » yelled Lenore in the deaf air.

Alone and mute again, she turned to the machine, studying it absently. It was as shiny as the goggles, with a lot of flashy lights and weird knobs. She patted as gently as she could without going through it, thanking it silently for the gift it gave her.

The machine felt warm, warmer than regular electrical appliances, and she let her hand hover over it for a second. Something inside of it was humming, loud and clear, and the air around the machine vibrated imperceptibly. Lenore fought with herself before giving in to the temptation and pushing her fingers through the metal walls. She went in slowly, unsure for some reason. When she reached the center, something hot and fast pulsed, something she could almost _feel_.

HG came back to her at that moment and she remove her hand quickly, feeling silly. She even took a step back, hands behind her back, as she watched him put on his goggles and earbuds, plugging both into the machine.

He checked to see if anyone was paying him any attention, but all faces were turned toward the tent, and the closet was far enough for his voice to go unheard. Finally he turned around, looking for her, and she knew he’d seen her when a smile spread on his face without him even realizing it.

« Hello, » he said warmly.

« Hey, » she answered, smiling back without meaning too. 

« Sorry about... » he trailed off, nodding his head toward the room.

« Nah, I didn’t wait at all, » she lied, terribly.

« I asked your brother if he was okay with me setting up the machine in your room and following the procedure through it, and he gladly accepted. He said something about ‘mesmerism all over again’ that I didn’t quite catch, but I prefered to ask first. » 

« That’s ... nice. »

His politeness was always a surprise to her. She didn’t consider herself to be a rude person, but she wouldn’t have thought of taking this extra step if it had been him in her place. He was respectful and kind to everyone, and she didn’t know a single person who didn’t appreciate HG in return. There was a steadiness, a strength, in that gentleness.

« Like I said, I made some changes to the machine, some... add-ons, if you will, so there might be a few new interferences now – oh, sorry, » he suddenly said, raising a hand in warning as she was approaching, « but it’s probably best if you don’t get too close to it, I’m not certain how the crystals will react to your proximity, they are part of this new... What ? »

« I ... uh ... »

It was getting harder and harder to hide things from him as he was learning her facial expressions, and right now, Lenore’s face was telegraphing accross the country that she had messed up.

But before she had a chance to make amends or apologize or even just explain herself, Lenore felt this terrible tug accross her midsection, like a noose tightening itself around her and dragging her in all directions at once. She swayed in place, memories of the dizziness that had struck right before she fainted that first fateful day flashing through her mind. She looked around first then straight at HG, her eyes begging for help.

« Lenore, talk to me, I can’t help if you don’t tell me what happened ! » he urged, hands reaching for her.

She reached back, but the feeling on her abdomen was getting stronger and she flailed around, her hands going through his several times when she desperately tried to hold on as she was being dragged away.

« I touched the machine, I’m sorry ! » she cried when she saw the purple smoke invading the corners of her visions. His face started to fade into darkness too. Gathering all of her strength, she pulled as hard as she could and threw herself toward HG. As she was about to hit him, the darkness filled up her vision and she fell forward, seemingly forever.

______________________

In less than a second, Lenore was back in the dark, panting and swearing.

« No, no, NO ! » she screamed, tears flowing out of her eyes with every shake of her head.

_This couldn’t be it !_

They were getting somewhere. She was getting used to her new ghost form, she could have waited some more, and in time, HG would have found a way to get her out of here, but now, it was all gone, all because of her. Because she couldn’t keep her hands to herself or be left alone for a minute.

She had messed up.

Lenore banged her fists against the floor. It had no effect whatsoever – no sound, no shockwave, not even pain in her hands. This was like fighting a dream. _How do you even do that_  ? Still, she hit it and hit it, growing more angry and frustrated by the second. She fueled that anger inside of her, fanning its flames into a blazing rage, because it was still better than the tsunami of fear and guilt that loomed on the horizon and maybe, if she let the fire consume her, she would be gone by the time the first wave struck home.

« RaaaaAAAAH ! » she howled, eyes and fists raising toward the absent sky. « Why are you doing this to ME ?! » she asked for the second time. « What have I done that was so horrible that I need to be punished like this ?! »

That one tiny bit of her that held onto hope despite everything that had happened to her waited, for merely a second, for an answer, like a small flickering candle in the darkness.

When the answer didn’t come, that tiny light went out, taking with it everything bright and optimistic still in Lenore. She howled again, louder and louder, as if she could break free from this world through sheer stubborness. She imagined the darkness catching fire, burning white hot and destroying everything this place stood for.

Lenore realized she was running forward when she felt her heart beat fast enough to hurt. Taking in big gulps of air in her sore lungs, she stopped and looked around.

The darkness swayed in wide, undulating waves, like the ones you see on country roads under a summer sun. It turned more purple than black by the second, until the air itself seemed to move as if it was the walls of a bouncy castle, colorful, fragile and empty.

Lenore wondered if she had broken the world.

« I’m sorry, » she choked out. Her lips trembled in warning before she broke down into sobs. « I’m so sorry ! » she cried.  

Through her blurry vision, she saw the waves coagulate again into a solid entity, and found herself back where it all started, alone in the dark. She hated herself for the relief she felt.

« I’m so sorry for everything, » she whispered, falling to her knees, her head hidden in her hands.

Inside, outside, all she could see was the dark. It filled up every corner of her soul, and in that moment, she knew what death was like – _only the sleep eternal, in an eternal night_.

The voice came like a whistle of the wind.

_Lenore_

Her ears picked up the sound without her knowing it and she straightened up.

_Lenore_

Here it came again. Her name.

_LENORE_

The whisper grew, taking shape, until it became a sound.

« Lenore ! »

It was a voice. It was HG’s voice.

He had found her again.

She scrambled to her feet.

« I’m here ! » she yelled.

« Keep talking, I can’t see you yet, » answered the voice.

« What do you mean you can’t see me yet ? I’m back in the dark, of course you can’t- Oh. »

She covered her mouth in surprise. She was in the dark, but so was he.

« What- how- what are you _doing here_  ? » she asked worriedly.

HG smiled.

« I connected the machine to Krishanti’s channel to try and break her connection to you when you disappeared. But because you touched it, it was still connected to you, somehow, and my best guess is that the overload from the dual channels caused the machine to short-circuit and well it- I was ... brought here. I don’t know if it is a universal place where I would have gone anyway or if I came here because of my connection to you but- »

Lenore cut him off by taking his hands in hers and stepping forward.

He was out of words, and there were none to express how she felt in that moment so they remained silent, looking at one another.

Until the very last second, he had tried to save her. And here he was, with her, subjecting himself to this for her sake.

His hand was warm and dry, his touch gentle but surprisingly firm. It shouldn't turn her on as much as it did - she wasn't one of Jane's Victorian OCs, to be swooning at the touch of a hand, for crying out loud - and yet here she was. Swooning.

In her defense, this was her first real human contact in weeks and she was just so happy to be feeling something, someone, again that she could cry – if she hadn’t already spent three lifetimes worth of tears in less than a month.

Instead she smiled so widely it was almost painful, as she searched for words to put on her feelings. « Thank you » felt like too little, « I’m sorry » like not enough.

He smiled back softly and Lenore was really happy that he didn’t need the goggles in this otherworld because she could see his eyes glittering in the low light and they were the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

« I’m glad I found you, » he finally said, his awareness of the euphemism clear in his tone.

Lenore choked out a laugh that was still half-sob.

« I’m glad you found me too, » she said.

He glanced around.

« Now that I know what this place is like, things will be easier. Experiencing the journey firsthand means I can figure out how to journey back. In an hour at most my machine will run out of battery and will shut down, effectively bringing me back to our normal plane. From then, I can start retracing my steps, and with any luck, yours as well. Maybe if I reroute the energy from Krishanti’s channel... » he trailed off, catching himself thinking out loud.

Lenore smiled. « So she’s the real deal, uh ? » she asked conversationally.

« Apparently so. I was as surprised as you are. I will, however, need to cite her if I ever get around to publishing any research on what happened to you. » He looked chagrined by the idea. « But without her I wouldn’t be here with you, so... »

« Give back to Cesar and all that, right. I’ll send her a bouquet when I get out. »

He chuckled.

« It's kind of unfair to you though, » she observed, entwining their fingers together. « I don't think I can ever repay you what you've done for me. »

« Oh, no, you don’t have to... to do anything, really, » he replied, staring at their joined hands. « Most of my experiences were accidents and- »

 « No, you don't understand, » she cut off, pressing his hands with hers to drive her point home. « I was alone. I was in the dark, all alone, with no way to ever get back, and all I could do was call out and pray that someone would hear. And you heard. You heard me. You heard me when no one else could, because you're amazing like that. »

He was silent for a while, eyes still down. When finally he looked back up at her, his eyes were dark and wide and full of emotion.

« Do you remember that night in college when I built the machine ? »

Lenore blinked in surprise.

« Yeah, actually, I was thinking of it even before you brought it up the other day- »

« Well. That night wasn't so good for me. I don't- I don't do well with drunk people, I was feeling anxious and very much out of place, which is how I ended up in that closet, working on my machine, » he explained, looking sideways in embarrassment. « I, too, was alone. No one even noticed my absence, I could just as easily have gone home. I even considered it for a while, but then... you showed up. » As he said this, their eyes locked. Lenore could feel her heart beat every passing second like a great clock, heavy and deep. « I thought you would have been partying with the others, and yet you sat down with me and just... stayed. I don't think you'll ever know how much your company that night meant to me. You _saw_ me. »

He took in a deep breath, gathering up his courage.

« That was the night I fell in love with you. »

Lenore gasped softly.

« I wouldn't have said anything had you still been happy with Guy but given the circumstances, I feel like I should. Just in case something happens and- I- I don't know, we... it never... anyway. I love you, » he repeated, solemnly. « I've been in love with you for years. Your brother knows, but I've begged him to keep it a secret from you, because you seemed so happy and when you announced your engagement, I thought you had found your soulmate and I had resolved myself to leave it at that. »

He had a look in his eyes that turned Lenore’s knees to jelly, and yet it was a look she knew by heart. That was how he had always looked at her. Lenore wondered how she could have missed it, how she could have missed him.

« But here I am, hoping again, and I know it sounds stupid and I probably shouldn't have said anything, but I'm scared my machine will fail and I will never get to see you again so... Here it is. I love you, » he said again. « I really do. Please say something. »

Lenore swallowed past the lump in her throat and reached out to him one last time, just as he started fading away.

« I really hope we match, » she said.

The last she saw of him was his smiling face, eyes shining among constellations of freckles.  His fingers faded between hers. She held on as long as she could, until all that was left beside her was the darkness, warmer than it had been before.


	8. You Are The One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally some fluff! I hope you guys like this chapter, I know I enjoyed writing it immensely. Only one more to come after this one!

 

Lenore expected a grand awakening, but really, it happened in steps.

At some point she became aware of light. At another, it was the steady beeping of machines. At yet another, she realized that the blurry colorful form poking her was not, in fact, some weird alien, but the nurse in his bright blue protective gear. She fought to keep her eyes open, but then she felt this awful sensation in her throat as something was removed from inside of her and she coughed, teary eyes shutting involuntarily.

The alien thing went to her head as she fell back asleep, and she dreamt of lights in the sky.

When next she woke, it was night, and she couldn’t tell whether she was still trapped inside of her own dimension or not because, honestly ? There wasn’t that big of a difference.

The blue nurse came back, or maybe it was another, but he asked her questions while he checked her pupils. When Lenore tried to respond, she coughed again, voice hoarse from lack of use, and she knew she was back. In her head, she sounded so clear, but here, she could barely choke out an answer.

She sighed in relief as the man turned away. Eyes wide, she listened to the sounds of the hospital, breathing slowly in and out to maintain the panic at bay.

She was back.

She was back !

A mere minute later, her room was full of people, doctors and nurses and technicians, checking her reflexes and hooking things up to her arms and chest. Lenore didn’t get to think or feel anything while they asked her questions, and she was grateful.

Everything was a little too much, right now.

She turned her head aside as an electrode was taped to her neck, and through the plastic window, looked at the clock.

She must have been still a little out of it, because it took two full revolutions of the tiny hand before the hour registered with her.

Seven forty-six.

Seven was HG’s hour.

 _Where was he_  ?

Turning back toward the doctor, she asked about him.

« Who ? »

The nurse chimed in.

« I think she means that young man who came by everyday, don’t you, dear ? » 

Lenore nodded.

« Oh, him... »

The nurse and doctor exchanged a look. For a second, Lenore felt time stop around her, as if in that one breathless, suspended moment, no news still meant good news.  

« He’s resting in another room, dearie. »

In Lenore’s head was a scream, loud and overpowering. In her ears was the rapidly rising bip of the heart monitor.

 _Not again_ , she prayed. She wasn’t sure she could live with herself after killing the love of her life twice.

Seeing her face, the nurse gasped and pressed her arm reassuringly.

« Oh no, no, no, sweetheart, he’s fine ! I think he just had a bit of a shock this afternoon, what with the ceremony and all, and he fainted, but he is fine, I promise. We are just keeping him under watch for the night. »

Breathing out a sigh of relief, Lenore closed her eyes and thanked the stars, or whoever was up there, for her luck. Her pulse slowed down. By the time the doctor was done, it was almost back to normal. The nurse pressed her arm again, gloves warm and rubbery against her skin.  

« You rest too, dear. Everything is fine with you. We’ll come back to check on you later, but for now you can sleep. »

As soon as she heard the words, Lenore was out like a light.

_____________________________

She awoke with a start, terrified that this had all been yet another dream.

She sat up in the bed, ripping out half of the electrodes from her skin, and immediately fell back down, heartbeat out of control but too weak to stand straight.

She howled something that sounded like « help ! » to her ears, but most of it was lost to the furious bipping of the machines.

Voices shouted at her from beyond the plastic tent, which only scared her more.

Eventually, some seconds later, the nurse came covered in blue again, and helped her calm down. Her gloves pulled at Lenore’s hair as she stroked her head, shushing her gently.

« It’s okay, dear, it’s okay, you’re okay... »

She offered Lenore some water, which she drank avidly. Room-temperature tap water had never tasted better to her tongue.

Panting a little, Lenore apologized. The nurse smiled behind the mask and patted her arm, reassuring her that it was all part of the job.

« Now, it’s still the middle of the night, so go back to sleep sweetie. I’ll come wake you up when your family’s here, they’ve been called. »

When she was alone again, Lenore thought of her family – of her mom, of her dad, of Edgar, of their friends.

Of everyone but _him_.

He was there in her mind, like on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t let herself think of him now.

Not yet.

Not until she saw him again. 

The worry that had been burning in her gut since that evening refused to die down, and nothing short of visual proof would squelch it.

She willed herself to sleep again, if only to make the hours go by faster. Behind her closed eyelids, anxiety painted the noise of a dead channel.

_______________________

« Look, she’s awake ! Hi honey ! »

Lenore blinked in confusion.

« Mom ? »

The blue nurse beside her bed had her mother’s face, and it felt like another strange dream. She nodded and smiled under the plastic mask.

« Hello, baby. How are you feeling ? »

Lenore blinked some more, before the question registered.

« I’m – what are you doing here ? » she asked, distracted.

Her mother looked down at herself as if only just noticing the protective gear.

« Oh this ? Well, they said they were gonna let you out of the tent later, but I just couldn’t wait to see you now that you’re awake. How are you ? How are you feeling ? » she asked again, cupping Lenore’s cheeks in her gloved hands.

Lenore gave herself up to the ministrations of her mother with the same patience she had the day before with the doctor, answering questions and getting her skin poked and prodded gently in turns.

The nurses and doctors came back, and her mother retreaded to give them some space. Lenore watched her remove the gear outside of the tent, confering with her father and Edgar in low tones.

Her dad waved at her when he noticed her looking. At that gesture, more people came into view, placing themselves in from of the plastic window and waving too – Oscar, Louisa, Emily, Ernest.

Behind them, Annabel stood with Eddie, not waving but smiling widely and looking at her with such warmth in her eyes that Lenore felt herself smiling back.

The last results were good.

Lenore was okay.

They were gonna remove the tent.

She heard all of this, saw the smiling faces, but all Lenore could think of was his absence.

Even when they started pulling open the plastic curtains, and the people in the room counted down from ten, chanting in a weird form of ceremony, Lenore stared at the door and wished.

Prayed.

Called.

And as the tent was pushed back around her bed, her call was answered.

« Lenore ! »

HG burst through the door, calling out her name, as he had so many times in her head.

He was panting, barefooted, dressed in a hospital gown, and the way he held his machine in both arms made him lean forward awkwardly, but he was the most glorious vision she had ever seen.

People in the room parted like the Red Sea as he came in.

As he approached her bed, he realized the machine was useless and carefully put it down, pushing the unplugged goggles to the top of his head.

Lenore noticed it first.

She saw the broken goggles slipped accross his forehead, two bronze circles in that precise angle she had always known they would be.

But then HG saw her, gasping in realisation, her beautiful face framed in the white triangle of the tent's opening he had seen forever.

Both raised their hands as one, placing it tentatively over their chest, right in the middle.

They stared at each other in stunned silence, too shocked by the glory of the moment to even think of smiling.

Lenore was the first to move too. Ripping away the covers, she shrugged off the tubes and the electrodes and pushed away the barrier of her bed, sitting on its end. The weakness of her body was barely an afterthought, because her head was filled with _him_. She needed to reach out to him, to touch him and hold him close and never, ever let him go.

Luckily, the same things were running through HG's head as he stepped up to the bed, catching her body around the waist and holding her up.

Burrying her face in his neck, Lenore twisted her arms around his shoulders, slipped her fingers through his hair, and held on for dear life.

Their chests were pressed together. She could feel her mark burning, but not unpleasantly. It warmed the very core of her being like the sunlit sky of a summer afternoon. Held tight in his arms, she felt endless and light. She could hear HG murmuring her name, lips pressed against her hair.

Somehow, the distant idea that her family was in the room too didn't bother her. She couldn't hide this if she tried. Together at last, they were radiant.

There was no hiding the sun.

_________________________

In the quiet of the evening, Lenore watched the clock tick away seconds. Finally, the minute hand lined up with the zero. It was seven pm.

She smiled.

HG felt her lips move against his shoulder and stroked her nape softly. She took the hand that wasn’t curled around her back in hers and entwined their fingers.

She remembered the sensation of his palm against hers from the otherworld, the warm weight of it.

It had felt real.

It had been real, somehow.

An hour later, the nurse found them asleep against one another. She shook Lenore gently, and pulled her arm away, wrapping the blood pressure monitor around it.

HG woke up with a start. To Lenore’s surprise, his first reflex upon waking was to pull her back to him, arm tightening around her waist to keep her close.

Her heart swelled in way that had nothing to do with the monitor squeezing her arm, and she kissed his cheek sweetly to reassure him.

« It’s okay dear, I’m not taking her away from you just yet, » laughed the nurse, looking at them with a fond smile on her face. « Although you will need to leave soon, soulmate or not. This aisle is closed to the public at night. »

« I uh- I know, » answered HG, blinking away his tiredness and fear.

« She’ll still be here tomorrow, » she added with a wink, unwrapping the monitor and folding it over her arm. « Now, say your goodbyes, love, and be on your way. »

HG straightened up on the bed, hand falling away from her waist.

 « I’m... » he started. « I’ll be here tomorrow morning. I’ll uh- I’ll take some days off from work, and keep you company. »

Lenore propped herself up on an elbow, tracing the ghost of his mark over his shirt with her finger. The room was dimly lit in the evenings, but the blush that colored HG’s cheeks was impossible to ignore.

« As much as I appreciate being a priority, » she joked, « you really don’t have to. I have that scanner in the morning, and physical therapy at noon, not to mention my parents will be here... »

He looked at her questioningly.

Lowering her eyes, she bit her lip and felt her cheeks color too.

« I don’t want to hoard you all to myself, » she explained. « I mean, I do, I would totally keep you all for me, but that’s not... right. It’s _selfish_ , » she added, a nod to that conversation in the morgue that felt so incredibly far away now.

« Oh, » said HG simply, in that quietly understanding way of his. « Then ... I’ll come around seven, I guess, » he said.

« It’s a date, » smiled Lenore in return.

For a second they looked at each other, smiling, before sighing in unison.

« Goodnight, then, my dear Lenore, » said HG, in a tone that sounded less like the end of a moment and more like the promise of another.

« Goodnight, » she answered.

He rose from the bed, turning away from her, then stopped and turned back.

« I... » he hesitated, raising a hand.

« Yeah ? »

He bent down and kissed her cheek softly. When he straightened up, his hand cupped her face as if he was trying to keep the kiss there a second longer. His eyes sparkled.

« I love you, » he whispered.

Lenore blinked, her heart hammering in her chest. His thumb stroked the side of her face gently.

« I love you too, » she answered automatically, with no need to think it over or play any games. It was the truth, pure and absolute, she knew it now.

In a wider move, he brushed her bottom lip with his thumb.

Both of them gasped, a flash of electricity lighting up the room at once.

Lenore wanted to reach out and kiss him, and for a second he seemed to be considering it too. His eyes fell to her lips and he brushed them again, a second time, deliberately.

Lenore swallowed loudly.

Smiling like a cat that caught the proverbial canary, HG locked eyes with her again.

« Goodnight, Lenore, » he repeated, hand falling away, and left.

That night, Lenore fell asleep with her hands shielding her face from view because she couldn't stop smiling, and somewhere else in town, HG slept with a pillow over his head for the exact same reason.


	9. Stripped

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LAST CHAPTER GUYS!!! what a ride, I can't believe I finally finished something lol  
> This is 100% fluff, so just .... enjoy? :)

The next day, Lenore was busy arranging herself on the bed when HG came in.

The nurse had helped her take a shower that afternoon, and her freshly dried hair fell around her on the pillow like a halo of dark ringlets. She felt clean and warm, finally allowed to wear her own pajamas and bathrobe instead of the scratchy hospital gown.

After the initial knock, HG hovered by the door, watching her with a small smile on his face.

"Hello," he said tentatively.

Her own face broke out in a wide grin.

"Hi," she answered, beckoning him forward.

He took the hand she offered, shoulders relaxing slightly as he did so. Lenore felt herself breathe easier too.

Everything still felt a little surreal.

She had woken up with a scream again that morning, convinced she had hallucinated their relationship, despite knowing that this pull in her gut went in one way and one way only now. Had this all been a dream, still, it was his name she had screamed, it was his face she had missed.

She scooted over on the bed and patted the space besides her with her free hand. "Come on, sit, sit," she ordered.

He did so without letting go of her hand, which led to some interesting gymnastics and ended up with them pressed shoulder to shoulder on the narrow hospital bed, arms crossed awkwardly in the middle.

Lenore laughed out loud, untangled their fingers, and ducked under his arm, plastering herself to his side. His skin was burning up under his shirt, and she could hear his heart beat fast and loud right under her ear.

It was wonderful.

The hand that wasn't keeping her somewhat upright against him hung in the air where she had left it, unsure, before eventually coming to rest on her arm snuck around his slim waist.

Lenore wasn't tired, but she closed her eyes, savoring the moment. Against her cheek, his chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, regular as a tide.

She had never known such peace.

The distant idea that this could very well be how the rest of her life went struck her, and she smiled, burying her face in his shirt.

"You seem awfully happy," he said softly.

She nodded against him, feeling his arm tighten around her to bring her closer still.

"I take it you had a pleasant day?"

She shrugged, turning aside to look at him as she spoke.

"Eh. Busy. These brain scans take for-e-ver. Also, I started physical therapy at noon and I can't believe I'm so weak now. It's like I'm trying to stay corporeal and my legs just ... won’t? But they said it'll come back soon so... yeah, that was me. What about you, how was your day?"

"Unbearably boring," he sighed against her hair. He paused for a second. "... I couldn't stop thinking about you," he admitted.

Even out of the corner of her eye, Lenore saw him blush. The good professor was growing bolder, it seemed - she liked that idea very much.

"Oh?" she replied teasingly.

"Yes. I was counting down the hours all day. I wanted to tell you about every little event that was happening, and yet, now that I'm here, I can't think of a single thing to say, I'm just ...I’m happy."

"Aww," she gushed, not unkindly. "Not that my day was that fascinating either, but I get it. I missed you too," she said, looking into his eyes. She could see his every emotion in them, his wariness and his awe, and behind them, a love that burned deeper and hotter than the last circle of hell.

He held her gaze, breathing out slowly, before his eyes fell to her mouth.

Lenore bit her bottom lip instinctively, her eyes glazing over. She could kiss him right now. She could tangle her hands in his hair, straddle his lap and kiss the living daylights out of him.

Taking in a deep inspiration, she turned aside and settled back down beside him.

"Not like this," she mumbled against his side.

"Not now," he agreed, kissing her hair softly.

They laid contentedly on the bed for a while, before Lenore gasped and turned to face him again.

"Do you still have that book on you? I wanna know how it ends."

"I - yes, as a matter of fact I do," he said, bending a little to reach his bag on the floor.

It took a little effort to find a comfortable position to read - her back against his front, his hands on both side of her waist, holding the book in front of them both, his head resting on her shoulder and his breath tickling her ear - and some more time to find their spot in the book, but when he resumed his reading, Lenore sighed with pleasure.

It was even better than it had been in the dream world. Everything was better than there, admittedly, but especially this. She could feel his words vibrate against her back.

Closing her eyes again, she lost herself in the story.

____________________

"Did they say when you would be released?" asked HG a few days later, reclining in Lenore’s bed again.

"Two days," she sighed. "I have to have another brain scan before they can let me leave, and then I gotta see the doctor who is operating all day tomorrow or something."

She turned aside so he could see her dramatic pout.

"That's unfortunate," he agreed, smiling against her hair. He nosed the side of her head affectionately, "but it's best to be careful. In the meantime, however..."  he trailed off, picking up the opened copy of Frankenstein currently laying across Lenore’s lap.

Lenore hummed happily in agreement.

" _These were wild and miserable thoughts; but I cannot describe to you how the eternal twinkling of the stars weighed upon me_... "

"HG?" she interrupted.

"Hm?"

"You sound really sexy when you read."

HG turned a beautiful shade crimson. This was a new record blush – not that Lenore was keeping score or anything.

He coughed quietly.

"You're biased."

_________________

On Saturday morning, one entire month to the day after the start of this ordeal, Lenore was released from the hospital.

At long-freaking-last.

The ride home was a parade of their friends’ cars, honking and riding besides her dad’s minivan. She was squished on the back seat between Edgar and HG, listening to them chat over her head while she pretended to rest.

Their entire house had been decorated by the unmistakable hand of Annabel, in Lenore’s favorite colors. As soon as she crossed the threshold, a drink appeared in her hand that seemed to magically refill itself every five minutes or so.

She went from person to person, being held, hugged, congratulated and winked at conspiratorially. Most of them had a twinkle in their eye that had nothing to do with her coming back from the brink of death and everything to do with the sweet boy at the arm of whom she had entered the house.

Well, except Mary, obviously.

The Official Goth™ of their friend group (“For the last time, Lenore, I am not a goth, ravens don’t belong to a particular clique!” Edgar had yelled one day across the dinner table. “And black is a very flattering color for my skin tone.” She couldn’t argue that last part.) accosted her with a manic smile and a hushed voice.

“So, how was _it_?” she asked.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out which part of her adventure interested the mortician-in-training.

“As you would expect, mostly black,” answered Lenore lightly. That much was true, at least.

“HG told me you could hear him read my book.” Her smile widened again, becoming all the more unsettling for it. “I shall try that someday...”

“Wait, is that true? You could hear us?” interrupted Annabel, passing behind them.

Lenore nodded.

“Oh...”

Annabel bit her lip, as if she could swallow back all of her secrets.

There was a difference between confiding in your best friend, and pouring your heart out to a deaf wall, and the line ran precisely in the middle of “Sorry I’m dating your dead boyfriend’s dick brother” and “I think I love your dead boyfriend’s brother even though he acts like an ass sometimes, and also he apparently doesn’t have a soulmark and I feel bad for him.”

The blush covering both her pale cheeks and Lenore’s tan ones betrayed their shared memory of that monologue.

Not one to be set off her rocker by such a thing, however, Lenore grabbed Anna’s arm and smiled confidently.

“Don’t worry babe,” she shushed, “you _all_ said a lot of weird stuff to me but TBH, all I remember from then is my sweet, sweet HG. You all fade to the background,” she winked.

Annabel smiled, while Mary gagged.

When she was gone to find a less nauseatingly romantic conversation, Lenore turned to her friend and whispered, “We can talk tomorrow if you wanna.”

Nodding, Annabel kissed her cheek.

“I’m so glad you’re back.”

She left too, called away by Edgar and Ernest to arbitrate another one of their stupid contests.

Lenore looked around at the animated groups surrounding her, all of them friends or family, chatting and drinking and laughing. She felt as if she was standing in the eye of a hurricane.

Before, she had _been_ the hurricane. She had always been right in the middle of the party, dancing on tables and lining up shots.

But now, time seemed to pass differently for her, slower, like she was looking at it through a window pane - not like it had been in the hospital, when she was an almost-ghost observing the living, but not like it used to be either. She felt connected to yet another plane of existence, parallel to this one, close by, but ... different.

All of a sudden, she felt very lonely.

The feeling was familiar. She remembered feeling that same thing in the same context, like a weird déjà vu, poking and prodding at the memory until...

_Oh._

_The party._

_That college party where..._

Smiling to herself, she realized this was where it had all started. She had been alone then too, spit out by another hurricane, and she had wandered the halls in search of him, driven by a destiny that had yet to unfold.

Lenore closed her eyes and focused on the beat of her heart below her mark.

She knew just where to find him now.

Elbowing her way through the crowd, she jogged through the kitchen and out of the back door.

Here he was, jumping in surprise at her arrival.

Lenore closed the door behind her, smiling like a mad woman.

“Hey,” she said.

She wasn’t in her blue dress this time – it still hung in her closet upstairs despite the stink of alcohol on it, and suddenly, Lenore understood why she had never been able to get rid of it -  but she was wearing a blue shirt, even though he didn’t need it to see how history was repeating itself.

HG stared at her as she approached.

“I was hoping you would join me,” he said quietly.

“Sorry it took so long,” she answered, feeling like a spy talking in code, because the words were simple, the sentences made sense, but they also carried a meaning that went far beyond that night.

She reached her hands out to him and he took them without hesitation, bringing her flush against him.

They were both breathing hard, Lenore swallowed audibly, and under the freckles, HG’s skin was the most beautiful shade of pink Lenore had ever seen. She felt her heart beat twice as fast as it usually did, but maybe that was the echo of his, pulsing against her ribcage.

When their eyes had met through the open door just now, something inside of her had relaxed. It had felt like a light turning on, or a flower blossoming in spring - like something that was obvious, but also an unexpected blessing.

In this moment, Lenore knew that, all that stuff everyone said about soulmates?

All true. All of it.

The lights. The fireworks. The elation. The vindication. The feeling of puzzle pieces slotting together without a single hair of space between them at long, long last.

He let go of her hands and brought his to her face, caressing the hair at her nape. Their foreheads touched, and Lenore forgot how to breathe.

From this close, all she could see was the swirling brown of his eyes, twinkling in the low light of the sunset. He blinked, pupils dilated.

“To think I almost lost you...” he breathed out against her lips, voice shaken.

“Don't talk about it,” she interrupted with a shake of her head that bumped their noses together.

“But I’m glad in a way,” he continued conversationally. Only the pull of his fingers on her skin and the staccato of his pulse under Lenore’s palms betrayed how affected he was by her proximity.

She said “Oh?” when she really meant “Why?” but he understood.

“That is how it was supposed to happen. It brought you to me,” he answered, looking down at their chests pressed together.

When he looked back up, their eyes met. One of his hands cupped her cheek, and his eyes glazed over, but still he hesitated.

“I...”

“HG?” asked Lenore.  

“Um?” he answered distractedly.

“Stop talking and kiss me.”

“Gladly,” he laughed, bringing their lips together at last.

Lenore grunted when their lips first touched because _he was still talking_ but then she melted into the kiss, her hands coming around his waist and up his back, holding on before she sank for good into this new, happier oblivion.

_____________________

 

Lenore’s eyes shot open and she gasped, not daring to move.

Looking around, she saw her teddy bear on the nightstand, the boy bands posters she had put up the walls during her teenage years, and the door to her giant closet sitting ajar, as it always was.

She breathed out slowly.

On both sides of the black out curtains, twin rays of light announced the morning.

She fell back on her pillow, certain that she was home and that it had been nothing but a nightmare.

Something moved beside her on the bed and she jumped, not yet screaming but gasping again in fright.

Panting, she drew back the covers to reveal a sleepy HG, blinking owlishly at her, a comforting hand patting her stomach.

“Just a dream,” he mumbled, eyes half-closed.

She sighed with relief and nudged at his hand until he drew her close. In the warm embrace of his arms, nose buried in the crook of his neck, she let herself breathe normally again.

After what happened to her she had resigned herself to a serious case of PTSD, but it was mostly limited to the mornings. Also, she had the best remedy of all for those, she thought with a smile.

HG was falling back asleep, though, and she was wide awake and feeling a little mischievous after her fright, so she let her fingers glide softly along his ticklish sides, seeing him go from a twinge to a full-on squirm, until he was shaking with laughter. All he could do to stop the tickles was grab her hands and pin her down.

A flash of heat ran through Lenore at the sight of him weighing down on her like this, out of breath, eyes hazy with sleep but still dark and shiny with mirth.

Lowering his head, he nuzzled the side of her face, her neck, her collarbone, leaving behind a trail of butterfly kisses.

Lenore sighed, the memory of last night still fresh in her mind, on her body. His kisses dipped lower, brushing the top of her breasts, and she arched her back, the sheet falling away.

He looked her over reverently, eyes falling to the mark on her breastbone. In this position, his was a mirror image, almost directly above hers.

He bent and kissed it soundly. Lenore couldn’t tell if the “I love you” she heard was whispered or implicit in his actions, but she heard it all the same.

He settled beside her again eventually, legs tangled together, eyes meeting over the pillows.

“Not a bad way to wake up,” she said.

He nodded, still a little out of breath.

“I could happily wake like this for the rest of my life.”

Lenore smiled. “Is that you proposing?” she joked.

“No – I mean, yes,” he amended, “well, maybe – no!”

She laughed. “You just gave _every possible answer_ beside...”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“... there it is.”

He smiled too, a little quieter, a little more solemn.

“What I mean is,” he explained “I do wish to spend my life with you – I could spend every second of it with you without a complain. But I’m guessing you expect a formal proposal at some point, which is not what is currently happening. That being said, I meant what I ... said.”

“I get it,” she reassured him. “And FYI, of course I’m gonna say yes. Just ... if that was a question, I mean.”

He kissed her then, softly, sweetly, their soulmarks aligning. Neither of them spoke for a while after that, losing the early morning in each other.

They lived in a different time now, a time in which there was no one but the two of them – forever.

 

______________________

Epilogue

 

“Okay, so I am _never_ telling you anything _ever_ again,” sighed Lenore, a hand covering her face. “You’re worse than Mary.”

“Maybe we’re soulmates,” replied Edgar bitterly. “Who even knows where those hide.”

“Nah, she knows who her soulmate is,” answered Lenore. “It’s that Percy guy who was in BritLit with us, but he has a girlfriend he won’t leave.”

Edgar rolled his eyes. “And thus ends my tragic romance, where hers begins. Don’t try and change the subject.”

Lenore sighed again, before resuming her narration.

“So, we went down to the morgue to check the mark on Guy...”

Edgar’s eyebrows went up his large forehead.

“HG broke into a morgue for you?”

She smiled proudly at that. “Yup.”

Shaking his head in disbelief, Edgar wrote it down with the rest of his sister’s story. It would make great material for poems, he’d said. Lenore had silently gagged, but agreed anyway. At least it kept him occupied.

Lenore felt bad for him.

She and HG finding each other was a constant reminder for him of his loneliness, and his other best friend, Ernest, while as lonely as he was, was a terrible enabler with a drinking problem, so ... not the best person to confide in.

So, here she was, giving him all the deets to her journey through the void and subsequent soulmate discovery, laying down on the couch like the patient in a shrink’s office, and here he was, taking notes in a recycled paper notebook that looked straight out of the Middle Ages, with a _feather quill_ of all things ( _hashtag not a goth, right?_ ), standing upright and inspired in the middle of the living room.

Lenore checked her phone while she talked, waiting for a text from the aforementioned soulmate, when she noticed three missed calls from Annabel. She rose to a sitting position, intrigued.

“What now?” asked Edgar in an impatient voice.

“It’s Anna. She called me three times in the past five minutes.”

“Why? Is she okay?” he asked, the impatience in his voice replaced by an obvious worry.

“And how would I know that?” retorted Lenore, giving him a serious side-eye while she dialed her best friend’s number.

Edgar paced around the living room agitatedly. He put the notebook and quill down, picked the quill up again, then put it back down again, and was trying to keep his hands busy by filling up his ink pot when they heard a phone ring right outside the door. The siblings exchanged a look, before the door burst open.

Not bothering to silence the ringing in her pocket, Annabel barged into the room, eyes and face red. She came right to the couch, panting and sniffing.

“Eddie and I broke up,” she announced. “He, Anne and Charlotte have just been arrested for fraud and forgery.”

“What?!” yelled Lenore. She was a quick girl, but this was a bit much, even for her.

Beside her, Edgar jumped, and he fumbled with the ink pot, spilling half of it on Anna’s new top, a beautiful frilly turquoise blouse.

“Watch out!” cried Lenore.

The two were deaf to her, however, staring at each other in shock.

They raised their hands to their hip in perfect synchronicity and gasped. Annabel’s hand was covered in black ink and her top was ruined, but she was inexplicably smiling through her tears.

Only then did Lenore understand what was happening.

“Oh, you gotta be kidding me.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title makes more sense now, doesn't it ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) 
> 
> If the ending doesn't make any sense to you, I suggest re-reading the first chapter wink wink 
> 
> Also, I can't believe I can say this, but FANART HAS BEEN MADE OF THIS FIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! by none other than the AMAZING @icecreampizzer <3 <3 <3 
> 
> http://humanlighthouse.tumblr.com/post/173956900488/icecreampizzer-whos-a-sucker-for-soulmate-aus
> 
> and another HUGE thanks to @a_ufo_party who has been the sweetest beta ever and has largely contributed to making this fic what it is, thank you so much babe <3


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